


Forsaken in Death, Born in Wrath

by NetRaptor



Series: Destiny and Destiny 2 stories [38]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Friendship, Light Horror, Wrathborn hunts, soul mates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29287461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NetRaptor/pseuds/NetRaptor
Summary: When Silvan the warlock has a bad encounter with a cryptolith, Crow is the only one who can treat her wound. Slowly she becomes enmeshed in his hunt for the Wrathborn, and then his dreams about paracausal hawks. But their lives are entwined in a way Silvan never wanted. Should she flee this Crow and his Forsaken past, or stick by him to the end?
Relationships: Crow/female guardian
Series: Destiny and Destiny 2 stories [38]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1072209
Comments: 24
Kudos: 35





	1. Part 1: The Forsaken Prince

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story draws from the events in [Blessing of Light, Curse of Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18155048/chapters/42931655), which deals with Uldren's resurrection in the Dreaming City. Reading that first will increase your enjoyment of this story.

Deep in the asteroid belt of the solar system lay the Reef: an inhospitable jungle of wrecked space ships and terraformed asteroids. It was the home of the elf-like Awoken people, as well as hostile alien factions, like the Eliksni.

A lone jumpship winged its way through the Reef until it reached the Tangled Shore, a small continent of asteroids and ships lashed together. The ship flew beneath the Shore and docked in a cove in the shadows of the rocks. This was a smuggler's haven called Thieves' Landing. If anyone needed news, this was the place to find it-as well as other less savory fare.

"I heard that Madrid is out here," Silvan said to her Ghost as she pulled on her helmet. "Do you think he knows anything about these alien spires we keep finding?"

Her Ghost, Bramble, floated beside her, a little robot like a digital eye in a star-shaped shell. He spun the back half of his shell anxiously. "I hope so. I don't understand what's going on." His eye flicked to the red-stained bandage on Silvan's hand. Ghosts could heal any injury their Chosen received, but he couldn't touch the jagged slash beneath the gauze.

Silvan Nerisis was an Awoken Warlock, her skin a powder blue and sprinkled with glowing freckles. Her eyes glowed silver, and her long red hair was braided and coiled against her head to fit under her helmet. She had been resurrected by her Ghost many years ago and empowered with a mysterious force known as the Light. She was known as a Guardian.

While studying the Reef's climatology, she had run across a strange, organic-looking spike, twenty feet tall. Silvan had visited the Tangled Shore before, but this spire with its jagged claws and seashell-spiral shape were new to her. A wound it gave her would not heal. Bramble suspected that poison was at work.

Thieves' Landing was an Eliksni town run by Spider, a crime boss and the only law on the Shore. Silvan's friend Madrid had been working there the last time she'd heard from him. Hopefully he would know what was going on with the alien spires. Maybe Spider would have a cure for the toxin that throbbed in her hand. Making a run for Earth would take too long-if she arrived with a wound nobody could cure, her Ghost might not be able to resurrect her if she died of it.

Silvan awkwardly zipped her warmest robe around herself with one hand. Then she disembarked from her jumpship into the cold wind of the Shore. The continent made a full rotation every ten hours, and its thin atmosphere churned with the motion and with temperature differentials. Several nearby Eliksni looked up, acknowledged the arrival of another Guardian, and returned to their tasks, their four arms busy with tools and metal.

Silvan hurried to a cave with a barricade in front of it. An alien guard with a spear glanced at her and waved her inside. Guardians visited Spider all the time, both to visit his black market, and to pick up bounties. Silvan carried only a sidearm-not that she could use it with her right hand slashed open. She could shoot left-handed in a pinch, but her aim wouldn't be good.

Halfway down the tunnel, she came upon Madrid's familiar tall, lanky figure, rummaging through a supply crate. Silvan waited until he stood up, surveying various machine parts he'd retrieved. Then she pulled off her helmet and said, "Hello, Madrid."

He looked up and grinned. "Silvan! What brings you here?"

Madrid was a tall, ruggedly handsome Awoken, with yellow eyes and blue hair he wore combed straight back from his forehead. He was dressed in expensive Reverie Dawn Hunter gear, all leaf-shaped metal over green padding. A tattered cloak flowed from his shoulders, still marked with a faded ace of spades. Silvan thought of him as her older brother.

She held out her bandaged hand. "My Ghost can't heal this. I thought Spider might have a cure."

Madrid's smile vanished. Looking grave, he took her hand and examined the blood that had soaked through the bandage. "What happened?"

"I was investigating this strange looking spire that had sprouted from the ground. There were a bunch of Eliksni around it, and they were … singing? They attacked me when I drew too close. They were insane. I've never seen anything like it. Then the spire started turning like a drill, and a sharp part cut my hand when I was fighting off the aliens. I think it's poisoned."

Madrid said nothing for a long moment, only gazed at her hand. His glowing golden eyes were somber. "I'll tell you what," he said. "Spider has taken on an enforcer to study and destroy those spires. If anybody will know how to treat a wound like this, he will. I'll take you to him." Still, he hesitated, gazing at her hand.

"Madrid?" Silvan said, watching his face. "What's wrong?"

His eyelids flickered, as if he winced at the question. "The enforcer … he's shy. You must take care not to startle him. And for the Light's sake, don't attack him."

"Why would I do that?" Silvan said, mystified. "Spider's guards would kill me. Plus, my hand hurts really bad. I don't care if the enforcer is a Hive God, as long as he can treat this." She searched Madrid's face. "He's not a Hive God, is he?"

Madrid smiled at last. "No, just another Awoken."

"Oh, good," Silvan said. "What are we waiting for?"

"Come on." Madrid led the way deeper into the cave, carrying his machine parts. Silvan watched his cloak billowing behind him. The sight of it made her sad. Once, it had belonged to the leader of the Hunters, Andal Brask. When an alien had murdered him, it had been taken up by his friend, Cayde-6, who became the Hunter Vanguard in his place. Then Cayde had been murdered by Prince Uldren Sov. Madrid had taken Cayde's cloak as a promise to avenge him, and he had succeeded in killing Uldren. But he'd spent two years in community service as his punishment. There was still no new Hunter Vanguard.

Silvan still mourned and missed both Andal Brask and Cayde. The sight of the old, worn cloak brought back memories of listening to them swap stories over bowls of spicy ramen. They had taken turns pranking her to distract her from her crushing schooling. Sometimes she wished she had been the one to pull the trigger on the Prince.

She followed Madrid to the entrance of the room where Spider ruled like a despot. A huge, overweight Eliksni, Spider sat on a throne with multiple mechanical legs, playing with the shell of a dead Ghost. He was deep in conversation with a human attendant, his four eyes glowing above a rebreather device, and paid Madrid and Silvan no attention.

Madrid led Silvan down an adjoining passage to one of numerous back rooms. Here was a pump with a tangle of pipes across the ceiling and down the back wall. Behind the pump, sheltered beneath the pipes, was a workbench, a rack of tools, and an Awoken man with a cloak and hood that concealed his face.

"Ah, Crow," said Madrid. "Here's the parts. Also, this is Silvan Nerisis."

Crow turned slowly, cautiously, one glowing yellow eye peeking from the depths of his hood. The front of his cloak was tattered to rags and bore Spider's logo, painted in bold brush strokes.

"A visitor?" Crow said, making no move to venture forward. "Is that safe?"

"She has a wound from a cryptolith that her Ghost can't heal," Madrid said. "She hopes you might know what to do."

Crow's mouth tightened. "The cryptoliths are deadly in many ways." He hesitated, just as Madrid had. Then he stepped forward. "Give me your hand, Guardian."

Silvan unwrapped the bandage and held her hand out. Crow took her hand and peered at it for a moment. His fingernails were broken and dirty, which was strange, because his hands were smooth, almost aristocratic, with long, graceful fingers.

"I need more light," Crow muttered. "Come to my workbench." He lifted a lantern, turned up the brightness, and set it beside her. In its light, he studied her hand, his face only a few inches away from it.

The wound looked worse in the strong light, the edges blackened with dried blood. It traveled from her second knuckle almost to her wrist, and it hurt like fire. The skin around it had already begun to swell.

"Poison, definitely," Crow said at last. "But I think I know what might work." He strode out of the room.

Silvan watched him go. She had the psychic ability to read people-not exactly telepathy, since she couldn't pick up thoughts. But she could sense emotions, and motives, and intent. Nearby, Madrid was watching her with worry like unsettled water, churning and swirling. Crow, though-what had she sensed from him? Fear? Yes, fear and guarded curiosity. Madrid had been right to say he was shy. But that wasn't entirely correct, either. There was a resonance to him, a feeling of being synchronized. Strange.

Crow returned, carrying a small jar and two bottles of nameless substances. He lifted a bowl onto the workbench and measured spoonfuls of each bottle's contents into it. A sharp scent filled the air, like disinfectant.

Silvan extended her psychic sense toward Crow again, curious. But her reach glanced off his guard. He wore it like a shield around his mind, impenetrable as crys-glass. Whatever she had sensed from him was blocked off.

Suddenly a Ghost appeared in a swirl of blue light. He wore a dark pink orchid shell with silver trim, with something bulky stuck to one side. He flew right into Silvan's face and said, "Don't."

She flinched backward. "Sorry!"

Crow looked up. "Glint? What's wrong?"

The Ghost flew to him. "She was using psychic powers on you, trying to read your mind."

Crow gave her a sharp look, like a cornered animal, his one visible eye flaring yellow beneath his hood.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that," Silvan said, looking down. "I was curious … but your mind is shielded. I couldn't pick up anything."

Crow said nothing, only returned to mixing the bowl's contents. But Glint said, "I should say he's shielded. Don't ever do that again." He floated at Crow's shoulder, keeping his tiny self between Silvan and his master.

Silvan cradled her injured hand and burned with embarrassment. Her psychic sense always got her into trouble. Why did she bother using it?

Crow lifted the bowl and slid it toward her. "There. Rub this into the wound. I think it'll work, from what I know of the Hive." His eyes lifted to her face, studying the braids in her hair.

He was close enough that Silvan could see his face under the hood. It was a bony, handsome face, with a distinctive X mark that touched his eyebrows and cheeks.

Only one Awoken man had that design. Prince Uldren Sov, killer of Cayde-6, butcher of his own people, executed for his crimes two years ago. But a Ghost floated at his shoulder: a Ghost who must have resurrected him. This meant he probably had no memories of his past.

Silvan quickly looked away, but her heart banged against her ribcage. Heat rushed to her face. She carefully dipped her fingers in the salve and spread it on her wound. It stung like acid and she inhaled through her teeth. Crow made a reflexive movement, reaching out as if he meant to help. But he withdrew his hand and turned away, studying some half-built machine at the other end of the workbench.

Inside her head, Silvan screamed to Bramble, "Crow is Uldren!"

"I noticed," Bramble replied through their neural link.

"You noticed and didn't tell me?"

"He's a Guardian now, Silv. He's not Uldren anymore. He's Crow."

"He was Crow before, too! That was his nickname!"

"Yes, and I wonder who named him, now," Bramble mused, sounding worried. "I wish they hadn't."

Madrid stepped up beside her and scrutinized her hand, interrupting her thoughts. "How does it feel?"

"Like I'm pouring fire on fire," Silvan said. "I don't know if it's helping. Any idea what kind of poison that was?"

"Neurotoxin," Crow said without looking up.

Silvan rubbed more salve on it, gritting her teeth against the pain. "What was that cryptolith, anyway? What'd you call it-a cryptolith?"

"A construct from the Hive goddess of war, Xivu Arath," said Madrid in a low voice. "You're lucky you didn't try your psychic sense on it. She'd have eaten your mind."

Silvan blinked at him as she grasped her narrow escape. "I think the crazy aliens saved me. Their minds were all screaming and singing. It was horrible."

Crow turned suddenly, his eyes flaring with interest beneath his hood. "Singing? What kind of singing?"

"Chanting, kind of," Silvan said. "You know how the Hive screech the names of their gods? Like that, only … a choir. Kind of harmonic. It was weird, because the Fallen don't sing like that. I'm a Gensym Scribe, you know. A scientist. I study these things."

Crow's gaze had drifted to her braided hair again. "A scientist?" he said, his attention snapping back to her face. "Your knowledge will be useful." He cleared his throat and turned away, tugging his hood further over his face. He rested his hands on the half-built machine. "I'm working on a lure to draw out the leaders of these possessed people. The ones creating the cryptoliths. We call them Wrathborn."

Madrid said, "The Wrathborn act as conduits for Xivu Arath's power. If we destroy them, her grasp on the Tangled Shore will weaken. But they walk the Ascendant Realm and don't often enter our reality."

"The Fallen," Crow said quietly. "The Eliksni people. They struggle for survival, just as humanity does. They don't deserve to be turned into rage machines by an evil force. I wish I could find a way to free them."

Silvan sensed the sincerity behind these words, and peered at Crow questioningly. In his past life, he had hunted and slaughtered the Awoken people, creating the zombie Scorn to further ravage the Reef. But now, here he was, a warrior of the Light itself, wishing for ways around killing. Silvan, herself, gunned down Eliksni without ever thinking of them as people.

Crow looked up and saw her expression. "You disagree?"

"Not exactly," Silvan said, choosing her words carefully. "I've just … never met anyone who sought other paths to peace besides hot lead."

Crow smiled and turned away. "Killing is not always necessary. And … and you should rest. That salve needs time to work."

Silvan looked at her hand and imagined lying in the bunk on her ship, alone, with nothing to distract her from the pain. "If it's all the same to you, could I rest here? Distractions help."

Crow glanced at Madrid, who nodded. "Over here, behind the pump, Silvan. You can rest here."

Several horizontal pipes near the floor created a sort of bench. Madrid laid a folded tarp over them and helped Silvan sit down. It was a narrow little alcove, but the pump only cycled on every twenty minutes or so, and the pipes were warm. Silvan curled up on the tarp and watched Crow and Madrid confer over the lure on the workbench. By and by she fell asleep.

* * *

"Who is she?" Crow blurted.

He and Madrid had been fitting a series of canisters with mouths that screwed into the lure with an airtight seal. They had been quiet for several minutes. Silvan's deep breathing was the loudest sound in the room. Then the pump rumbled to life. Under cover of its noise, Crow asked his question.

Madrid glanced at Silvan's sleeping form, curled with her feet drawn under her robes for warmth. "Silvan's been like my little sister since her resurrection. She really is a scientist. She's written all sorts of papers about Jupiter's lesser moons."

Crow kept his hands busy, but his treacherous eyes kept trying to stray in the direction of the sleeping woman. "She's beautiful, isn't she?"

"Yes," said Madrid carefully. "She's also not looking for a relationship, Crow."

Crow's cheeks warmed and he was glad of his hood. He checked the fit on a canister against the lure. "I was only asking. I've never met a girl before. A girl who … didn't kill me on sight."

"There's plenty of them out there," Madrid said dryly. "Don't get attached, Crow. Silvan has had a trail of admirers for years, and she's never shown the slightest interest in any of them. If you want a girl, you'll find one eventually."

Madrid's candor had always been one thing Crow liked about the man. But right now it stung. Crow had resurrected in the Dreaming City with a few faded memories. Madrid and another Guardian named Jayesh had helped him as much as they could, even finding him a ship. For a while, Crow had traveled with a fireteam. But the team dissolved over politics. Crow had returned to the Reef, alone, unsure where he belonged. He'd crashed his ship on an asteroid, then spent a very long time dying and being resurrected over and over as he asphyxiated. He was retrieved by a passing Eliksni salvage team, who counted him among their scrap. They'd given him to Spider, who named him Crow. His team had called him Uldren, but the name never seemed to fit right in his brain. Crow was a little more symbolic of the wandering carrion-picker he had become.

When he'd had a team, he'd done good things, saved people, and watched Mithrax preach the religion that was the foundation of the House of Light. But Mithrax actually collected followers and couldn't run about the system anymore. Soon Crow was alone, and discovered just how much Guardians hated him. First, there was the startled, wide-eyed look. Then a black expression of hatred. Then the weapons. He quickly learned to never remove his helmet. Even now, working for Spider, sometimes Guardians recognized him.

His friends had given him a rough idea of what he'd done and why he was so despised. If he was him, he'd kill him, too. But it was desperately lonely, being the punching bag of the universe. When Madrid had found him, Crow had clung to him-the first friendly face he'd seen in ages. Madrid had understood what Crow had been through. In a few words, he explained about his sentence in the Dreaming City and his task on Earth's Moon. He'd stayed ever since, working for Spider, sticking with Crow like a brother. It made the loneliness a little less. It also reduced some of the horror of having his Ghost strapped with a bomb.

He mentally reached out and touched the spot in his mind that he shared with Glint. It had grown stronger since he'd changed the Ghost's name to one that he'd selected. Glint had been his steadfast, cheerful, hopeful friend, even on the darkest days. But Spider demanded loyalty, and the price of that was the explosive wired to Glint's shell.

"What do you think?" he thought.

"Me?" Glint replied. "What makes you think I know anything about girls?"

Crow glanced up at his Ghost without speaking aloud. "You're knowledgeable about most things. I thought maybe you had some hidden store of knowledge in that little brain of yours."

Glint's eye was fixed on him steadily. It shimmered with fun. "Sure, I know lots of things. But that girl, Silvan, is an utter mystery to me."

"Can you talk to her Ghost?"

"And say what? 'Hello, my Guardian thinks your Guardian is cute.'"

"Uh … maybe not that." Crow returned his gaze to the half-built lure. "How's her hand?"

"I'll check."

Glint flew across the room and scanned Silvan's hand where it rested on the tarp. Her Ghost appeared in its purple shell, and they conferred for a moment. Glint returned to Crow's side. "Some of the redness and swelling have abated, but her Ghost still can't heal it."

"It may have to heal naturally," Crow thought. "Let's make sure to never touch one of those cryptoliths."

"Right," Glint replied.

They kept working. A little later, Silvan stirred and sat up, clutching her hand. Crow watched from the cover of his hood as she held out her hand to her Ghost, who pulsed healing Light into it. The wound remained unchanged. Silvan got up and came to the workbench. "Is there any more of that salve?"

Crow passed her the bowl. "How does it feel?" He studied her red hair, the way the braids changed color from a lighter red to a darker one down the length of the weave. As she took the bowl, he studied the curve of her eyelids, the long, feathery lashes, and the smatter of glowing freckles. She had stars all over her face. How was she so beautiful and also a scientist? It seemed like brains and beauty ought to work against each other, somehow.

"It still hurts," Silvan said in a low voice. "But if I wrap it tightly, I ought to be able to handle weapons." Her gaze lifted to his. Her irises glowed a soft silver, and his heart caught in his throat. He was a goner, all right. For a second, there was almost a connection between them, a sense of what she was thinking. Or was he imagining things?

"I want to help hunt the Wrathborn," she said.

It was the hottest thing she could have said. Brains, beauty, _and_ a fighting spirit? Hunting Wrathborn meant that she wanted to work with _him_.

"Good," Crow said. "I mean, it's good that you still want to fight. I thought you'd go back to Earth for treatment, not hang around in Spider's trash." He laughed nervously. Had he said too much? He was making a fool of himself, wasn't he?

Silvan gazed at him for a long moment. Then she abruptly looked away, and Crow wondered uneasily if she'd been reading his thoughts. He absolutely did not want her to poke around in his mind right now. Or ever.

Silvan said, "You're right about innocent people being turned into slave soldiers. What if a cryptolith sprouts in an Awoken town?"

"That is one reason we must hunt the Wrathborn now," said Crow. He hefted the lure and turned it over, inspecting the wiring. It was better than embarrassing himself in front of a pretty girl. More than he already had, anyway.

Silvan and Madrid stepped out of the room together. A flicker of jealousy touched Crow's heart. But he quickly smothered it. Silvan and Madrid were like siblings, Madrid had said. Crow needed to mind his own business. He focused on the lure and picked up his tools.

* * *

"Why didn't you tell me that Uldren is a Guardian now?" Silvan hissed.

She and Madrid had taken refuge in another passage, far out of Crow's earshot. They stood behind a stack of crates where nobody would see them.

Madrid folded his arms. "Nobody needed to know, that's why. We tried to protect him from other Guardians. It didn't work. He's been murdered over and over by the people who should have been on his side. He's terrified of lightbearers. Did you see the way he wears his hood?"

"I did," Silvan muttered, folding her arms. "When was he resurrected?"

"Two years ago," Madrid replied. "Remember when Jayesh saved those people from the Dreaming City curse? Crow helped him do it."

Silvan's mouth fell open. She had been Jayesh's fervent fangirl ever since she heard the story, but she had no idea that the despised Uldren Sov was involved.

"You mean Crow helped," Silvan said.

"Crow went into the Ascendant Realm and rescued Jayesh," Madrid said. "He'd be dead if not for Crow."

"Jayesh never mentioned him," Silvan said softly, remembering all the times she'd tried to wring the story out of the warlock.

"He wouldn't," said Madrid. "He's been protecting Crow, too. Now, look. Crow is an example of the Traveler's grace. He's been given a second chance. Can we find it in our hearts to give him a second chance, too?"

Silvan stared at the floor. Then she turned her hand over and looked at the wound, which hurt slightly less. "Do you think Crow would tell me the story?" she said in a small voice.

Madrid slowly smiled. "I have no doubt that he would."

They returned to Crow's workshop, Silvan trailing behind Madrid, deep in thought. She'd thought for years that Jayesh Khatri was some kind of super warlock, single-handedly beating an undead dragon at her own game, freeing doomed people from a time loop where they died over and over. Even learning about how he had lost his Light hadn't dimmed her admiration. But now, Crow was in there, too-a similar hero, one nobody knew about. But-her mind tripped over this repeatedly. But _Uldren Sov._ How could she look into Crow's face without seeing the prince's sneer?

Even more unsettling was touching Crow's mind and feeling the attraction there. Silvan knew the signs of a crush, particularly the effects on the mind. Crow's whole being had turned warm and eager, his impenetrable guard weakening. That odd resonance had increased. She'd wanted to hunt Wrathborn with Madrid, not Crow, so much, but Crow took it that way. He was _Uldren_. Seeing _Uldren Sov_ develop a crush on her was nauseating. Maybe he'd get over it in a few days. He couldn't have interacted with many girls out here.

As they entered Spider's room, they found Crow there, standing beside Spider's chair with his head bowed. Spider was speaking to him in his gravelly voice, passing on a report about a Wrathborn sighting. Madrid and Silvan entered Crow's workshop and waited for him.

Crow returned a moment later and nodded to them both. "Spider demands that we begin the hunt. This lure is nearly complete. I just want to check the connections one more time. It must be airtight." He bent over the machine. It now resembled a terrifying toilet plunger, Silvan observed. The handle was wrapped with cords and a battery unit. The head had three huge spikes, like hypodermic needles, protruding from the bottom. The back of the head had attachments for three canisters. What the canisters might hold, and what the lure might inject into its target, were a mystery to Silvan.

"Excuse me, Crow," she said.

"Yes?" he said without looking up.

Silvan watched him. "Madrid said that you helped Jayesh Khatri rescue people from the Dreaming City."

Crow looked up. "You know Jayesh?"

Silvan nodded, smiling. "He's the best. I have a signed copy of his book and everything."

"He has a book, now?" Crow said.

Silvan had Bramble transmat it into her good hand. It was a thin paperback, by now much dog eared, about how to use the Light. She passed it to Crow, who flipped through it. He studied a few pages closely for a moment. "May I borrow this?"

"Sure," Silvan said. "It's all about developing and focusing your Light."

"Just what I need," Crow muttered. He held up a page for Glint to read. Then he carefully laid the book aside. "To answer your question, yes, I helped Jayesh rescue two Corsairs who were dying over and over."

"Can you tell me the story?" Silvan asked eagerly.

Crow bent over the lure again. "Well. How much do you know?"

"Everything except your part in it," Silvan said.

Crow didn't look up, but his voice held a note of sadness. "He never told you about me?"

Madrid said, "He never told anyone, Crow. He knew that hunting parties would come after you if he did."

"Oh," said Crow in a small voice. After a moment, he went on, "Yes, I accompanied him on his mad run through the Ascendant Realm." He told the story simply. As he did, Silvan realized that she'd never heard the details of what had happened out there. Jayesh had always left that part out, and the Dreaming City Corsairs hadn't known everything. As Crow talked about taking a dose of Queensfoil to enhance his senses and help himself navigate, Silvan's estimation of him began to rise. By the time he finished the story with their arrival in the Tower, Silvan was in conflict with herself. Crow was just as much of a hero as Jayesh. But he was /Uldren Sov, and she couldn't separate the two identities in her mind. Her fangirl inclinations were confused.

To make matters worse, she didn't need to aim her psychic sense at Crow to read him. He must have a measure of psychic powers, too, the way his sister did. His mind probed at hers, probably by accident, hoping for praise and affection. He was strong and hard to defend against. This crush of his was irritating. She blocked him out with thoughts of prime numbers. "That's amazing, Crow," she said, trying to sound enthusiastic. "I'm glad I know the real story, now."

Crow beamed and lifted the lure. "You're welcome. Also, I think this is ready for a test drive."

"Let's try it," said Madrid. He turned to Silvan. "Let me wrap your hand up. This could be a bad fight."

"Thanks," Silvan said. "Omar will help. You know how much he loves killing Hive."

As Madrid bandaged her hand, Crow said, "Who is Omar?"

"Omar Agah," Silvan said. "He was tortured by the Hive on the Moon and he helps me kill them."

Madrid chuckled, "He's the closest thing she has to a boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend," Silvan protested. "Just a very good friend."

She was aware of Crow's psychic attention withdrawing. Good. Let him think she was taken. It would make him less annoying.

* * *

After Silvan and Madrid departed to pick up gear from their ships, Spider called Crow back into his throne room.

Crow came, obedient as a dog on a chain. He bowed. "Yes, Baron?"

"I know you're watching the little female," Spider said, his four eyes scrutinizing Crow's expression and body language. "Do you think you have anything to offer her?"

Crow was silent for a moment. No, he had nothing to give a woman-no shelter, no home, no way to provide for her. He was a slave who lived on his master's scraps. Very quietly, he said, "No, Baron."

"Forget her," Spider said. "She is a Guardian, and Guardians hate trash like you." He gestured to Shank, a human woman who worked as his secretary, because if she ever left, she'd be sent back to the Prison of Elders. Crow had never seen Shank's face, and she had never spoken to him.

"I collect rubbish and make it useful," Spider said. "Stick with me, and I'll make sure you're taken care of."

"Yes, Baron," said Crow automatically. When Spider dismissed him with a gesture of a lower arm, Crow plodded back into his room and sat on the workbench.

Glint appeared beside him in his pretty orchid shell. "You're not trash," the Ghost said, flying near his face. "You're my partner, and I chose you. The Light chose you."

Crow reached up and stroked Glint's shell, trying to smile. It was more of a grimace. "She's taken, anyway. I don't know what I was thinking. Even if she did like me …" He gestured to the room, the pipes arching overhead, the pump running noisily. "Spider's right. I have nothing to offer a girl."

"Would you marry her?" Glint asked with interest.

Crow thought about it. "I want a girl who will stand by me long term, so … yes. But I guess it's not Silvan."

"There are other girls," Glint said. "There's plenty of time. You won't be a slave forever."

Crow's fingers hovered over the explosive wired to Glint's shell. He was afraid to touch it. "Will I ever get out of this? Will you?"

His own sick fear swirled inside him. Glint's dread was a thin layer on top, cold as ice.

Glint said, "I have to believe that we will. That there's a future for us. And it's a bright one."

"I'll believe it if you do," Crow said. He rose to his feet, picked up the lure and slung it over his shoulder. Then he carefully lifted the steel box with the mutagens inside. "Time to get going. With luck, this will be a good hunt."

* * *

Silvan opened the weapons locker on her ship. Stashed among the rifles and handguns was a truly monstrous machine gun. It was battered and scratched, but she kept it oiled and cleaned. She lifted it from its supports and tried holding it with her bandaged hand. She tried one position, then another. She sat down on the locker with a groan. "Omar, you might have to do all the aiming. I'm going to be useless with my hand like this."

"Let me see it," his voice said in her head.

Silvan opened the belt feed cover. Inside, just behind the firing mechanism, was a chunk of amber. Inside it was a preserved insect like a tiny whip scorpion. It's eyes glittered up at her.

Silvan held her hand within view of the amber. "I was able to get treatment for it, but it still hurts. I'm having trouble holding Xenophage steady."

"My poor girl," Omar muttered in her head. He was all that remained of a Guardian whose Light and soul had been poured into the body of an insect by the Hive. They'd intended to use him as a battery. He made a much better machine gun.

"Could you find a rock to use as a tripod?" Omar suggested. "That way you wouldn't have to tax your hand as much. I know this thing weighs a ton."

"I'm getting stronger," Silvan insisted. "I can carry you around and fire you without tiring as much. That's why this scratch is so frustrating." She sat there for a moment, running her finger along the barrel, considering how much to tell him. "Did you ever meet Uldren Sov?"

"The Prince of the Reef?" Omar said. "Unfortunately, yes. I had business at the Vestian Outpost one time and he was there, giving out bounties. But they were tricks. Suicidal ship attacks, or places where rock slides could bury you, or incursions into pirate territory. I watched him shove people's Ghosts into stinking chemicals that wouldn't come off. The man hated Guardians."

"Did you hear about his death?" Silvan asked.

"I'm a little behind the times these days," Omar said, but his voice was gleeful. "Tell me about it."

Silvan did, briefly. "And then he was resurrected as a Guardian."

"What?" Omar yelled. "Are you kidding me? A Guardian?" He subsided into chuckles. "A Guardian. The man who hated Guardians. Oh. That is rich. That is so perfect. What's he like?"

"His memory was wiped, of course," Silvan said. "He's actually quite sweet, but Guardians hate him and kill him all the time. Now he works for Spider. I think his Ghost has a bomb on his shell."

"That's not right," Omar said. "Even Sov doesn't deserve that. Guardians kill him? That's not right, either. That'll drive him to the Darkness quicker than anything."

"That's what I was thinking," Silvan said. "And I think he has a crush on me."

Omar made an incoherent sound of aggrieved shock.

"So I told him that you're my boyfriend," Silvan went on. "Just so he'd back off. He's very lonely, and I'm …"

"... The first pretty girl he's seen in ages," Omar finished. "And you were probably too nice to him. You're too nice to everyone, me included."

"I don't want to be a rude jerk to everyone," Silvan protested. "I want people to like me, so I'm nice to them. It's just … sometimes, guys get the wrong idea."

"Especially lonely guys with a bomb in their Ghost," said Omar. "Well. I'm going to be laughing about this for days. Sov a Guardian! The Traveler has a sense of humor."

Silvan closed up the machine gun and slung it over her shoulder on its strap. She had her Ghost store extra ammo for both it and her handgun. Then she went through Jayesh's breathing exercises to center her focus, readying the Light that flowed through her. When lightning danced unbidden at her fingertips, she left her ship.

Madrid and Crow awaited her at the edge of town, each sitting astride the hovering motorcycles known as sparrows. Madrid's was plain and undecorated. Crow's looked like he'd built it out of spare parts. Silvan felt a little self-conscious, riding up on her bright red racing sparrow with its streamlined foils.

Madrid eyed it. "You'll attract every thief in the Shore, riding that."

"It has an anti-theft arc field," Silvan said. She didn't look at Crow. His admiration of her and her sparrow beat against her mind like waves of overly-friendly water. "So, where does this hunt begin?"

"There," Madrid said, pointing down the cove. At the edge of the asteroid, nearly obscured by blowing dust, was one of the cryptoliths. "Just showed up a few days ago, and it keeps growing. Some of Spider's people got drawn in, so we're going to destroy it."

"They were good Eliksni," Crow said, his focus shifting away from Silvan. "Pyrrjas, Hanja, and Sirrhicks. Just beginning to rebuild their lives, and this happens." He glanced around. "What weapons?"

"Sniper," Madrid said, patting his scout rifle.

"Sidearm and machine gun," Silvan said. "My hand slows me down."

Crow forced a smile. "That leaves me. Shotgun and knives. I'll plant the lure and deal with the defense. You two cover me. When the Wrathborn appears, take it down, no matter what."

They crept toward the cryptolith on low power to reduce noise. A hundred yard away, they dismounted and advanced on foot. A group of aliens clustered around the cryptolith, some standing, others kneeling. They were silent and motionless. A dead Eliksni hung impaled on one of the cryptolith's claws, near the top. Its blue-black blood had dripped in a splatter beneath the cryptolith.

The ground around the cryptolith was covered in roots that writhed through the thin soil, cracking stone. The cryptolith, itself, looked as if it had grown like a plant to a height of ten feet, made of sheets of overlapping chitin. It was insect-like and somehow horrible.

Madrid climbed to the top of a rock outcropping and peered through his sights at the silent Eliksni. Silvan found a boulder to use as cover and a mount for Xenophage. "Fight soon, Omar," she thought to the insect inside. "Acquire targets as you like."

Xenophage quivered in her hands, Omar's Light running through its frame. Silvan held it lightly, letting it pivot on its own as it surveyed the battlefield.

Crow knelt at a distance, opened his metal box, and screwed three canisters into the lure's head. Two of them steamed blue and red. Then he walked, cat-footed, toward the cryptolith. The Eliksni ignored him. He crept up until he stood among the roots at the cryptolith's base. Then he raised the lure above his head and drove it into the roots with all his might. The spikes sank in and the canisters emptied, injecting the cryptolith's root system with mysterious energies.

At once, the cryptolith made an ear-splitting grinding sound. Its spiral layers began to rotate as it drilled its way higher out of the ground. The spiral body converged in a great circle that had been underground. Now the circle emerged and stared at them like a huge eye, burning with green soulfire. An awful psychic screaming filled Silvan's head.

The motionless Eliksni screamed and spun in place, their eyes unfocused and mad. They ran about like ants in a disturbed anthill. Two of them crashed together and attacked, ripping and tearing at each other with their teeth. Another found Crow, who blew its head off with his shotgun. Two more dropped with Madrid's bullets through their skulls.

Silvan held Xenophage, letting it track left and right as it studied the enemy. Omar always detected Guardians and had never yet shot a friendly target. But now, instead of selecting one of the aliens, the gun turned its muzzle toward the cryptolith's staring eye.

"Is that a target?" Silvan thought.

"Yes," Omar said. "Three shots."

She squeezed the trigger. Instead of a stream of bullets, Omar's magic gathered groups of bullets into a pellet and fired them all at once. The gun kicked. Silvan steadied it and fired twice more.

On the third impact, the burning soulfire went out, leaving an empty eye socket bleeding black tar. A new screech arose from the cryptolith, one that rose in pitch until it was beyond hearing. The corners of Silvan's vision went black.

The cryptolith peeled open like a grotesque cocoon. A huge Eliksni captain clawed his way out and stood staring around. His metal armor had been replaced by more chitin, as if he had been integrated into the cryptolith, itself. His eyes were wide and confused, not comprehending what was happening. This was a Wrathborn, linking the Tangled Shore with Xivu Arath's power.

Madrid, Silvan, and Crow opened fire. As Crow was the nearest target, the Wrathborn went after him, slashing and pouncing. Crow danced backward, weaving through the alien's defense with graceful footwork. He slipped close enough to sink a knife through a crack in the armor, into the Wrathborn's ribs.

The alien snarled and doubled up. One of its hands found the knife and tore it free. Then it turned and fled on all fours, faster than a man could ever hope to run. It vanished up the narrow road that led to the top of the asteroid.

"Come on!" Crow called. "It won't get far." He had his Ghost transmat his sparrow to him. Silvan and Madrid did the same.

A moment later, the three of them flew up the road on their bikes.

"Were you actually dancing?" Silvan called to Crow.

"A few well-chosen steps, yes," Crow said. He watched the ground, half-hanging off to look closer. "It's leaving a blood trail, see?"

To Silvan, the blood shimmered green with spilled soulfire. The sight made her ill, somehow. Eliksni had blue blood, not green. What had been done to the Wrathborn to change it so much that even its blood had altered structure?

They reached the surface, where the cold wind blew in vicious gusts in the sunlight. Mountains rose in a jagged spine a mile away, and there was no sign of their quarry.

But Crow and Madrid were hunters. They dismounted and studied the ground, following the blood trail. Silvan followed their lead on foot, pulling her robe tighter around herself for warmth. In her head, she said to her Ghost, "I've never seen anything like this. Did you hear the screaming?"

"I filtered as much as I could," Bramble replied. "There was a psychic assault going on that I've never felt before. It's overwhelmingly strong. It came from that eye that we shot. If you hadn't blinded it, it would have crept in through your ears and taken your brain, the way it did those Eliksni."

"What a lovely image, thanks for that," Silvan thought with a shudder.

Crow and Madrid reached the edge of a ravine that split the surface of the asteroid. Silvan caught up and looked, too. The blood trail dropped into the ravine and vanished into a hole burrowed in the stone, barely large enough for a man to squeeze through.

"Ladies first?" Silvan suggested.

"Absolutely not," Crow said. "Me first, then Silvan, then Madrid. Prepare for a fight and keep your Ghosts close." He jumped into the ravine, landed gracefully, and slid into the hole. A moment later, his voice came to them, relayed between their Ghosts. "It's about ten feet, then it opens out in a cavern. The Wrathborn is hiding. Move quickly and quietly."

Silvan slid down the hole, which was damp and muddy from a trickle of water in the ravine. She emerged in a natural cavern with a mossy floor and a little light filtering through a crack in the roof.

Crow caught her arm and pulled her to one side, pressing a finger to his lips. The blood trail burned green, clear for all to see. It stretched across the cavern to the top of another cryptolith that had just begun to burrow its way out of the ground. The Wrathborn crouched in front of this cryptolith, chanting softly, its breath rasping in its throat.

Madrid arrived with a scrape and crunch of boots on stone. Crow gestured at him to make the killing shot. He and Silvan crouched behind an outcropping.

Madrid aimed his scout rifle and blew the Wrathborn's head off. It fell, dead, on top of the cryptolith. Again, the cryptolith made that same grinding noise and began to drill its way out of the ground, penetrating the alien's body and lifting it into the air. Roots writhed out of the ground, breaking the stone with loud cracks.

As before, the cryptolith coiled open, and another Wrathborn spilled out. Another Eliksni, this one swollen to huge proportions, like a Hive ogre. Its skin had become bone plates that overlapped, forming natural armor. It faced them and roared a challenge, its voice ear-splitting in the enclosed space.

Madrid and Silvan fired at it, tearing off splinters of armor, punching holes in the grisly hide. But the monster didn't feel it. It bounded forward on all fours and swept them out of hiding with one swat of its claws.

Silvan flew across the cave and hit the far wall. Things cracked inside her. She collapsed to the floor, stunned and breathless, as her Ghost began healing her. Across the cave, the Wrathborn pursued Madrid, slashing and clawing at him. Crow ran up behind it with his shotgun, placed the barrel against its back, and fired. Gore exploded out of the monster's chest. It staggered and coughed, then whirled on Crow.

Silvan staggered to her feet, groping for Xenophage. Blast, she had dropped it when the monster hit her. All she had was her sidearm with its pathetic small-caliber bullets. She stepped forward, stumbled over the cryptolith's roots, and caught herself against the cryptolith's jagged side.

The razor-edged chitin sliced the bandage off her hand and opened her palm. The same painful toxin invaded her skin. But this time, a ferocious energy came with it. Rage such as she had never known poured through her, stemming from that pain. A million voices seemed to scream a war cry inside her, and she screamed with them. She drew her sidearm in her bloody right hand, heedless of the pain, and unloaded its magazine into the Wrathborn.

The small gun shouldn't have made a difference, not to a monster that felt no pain from larger, heavier weapons. But at her first shot, the Wrathborn turned and stared at her in disbelief, the jaw hanging open. She aimed into that mouth and fed it bullets, each one glowing with soulfire.

Rage! Hatred! Wrath! Silvan kept pulling the trigger even though the magazine was empty. She stormed toward the Wrathborn, summoned her sword of crackling Arc light, and drove it into the monster over and over. It clawed and bit her, but Silvan didn't feel it. All she felt was rage and the thrill of the fight.

The Wrathborn was dead. She crouched on its back, although she didn't remember climbing there. A voice was saying softly in her mind, "Silvan. Remember who you are. Come back, Silvan."

Light washed over her, easing away the pain and the rage that came with it. Another voice said, "Peace, my star-child. Peace. Rest. Quiet."

Bramble. His voice always calmed her, as it had when she'd been a little girl, newly-resurrected and so frightened.

The other voice was not so familiar, but it was gentle and soothing. "Silvan. Come back, now. Remember the Light. Breathe in. Breathe out."

The world came back into focus by degrees. Nearby was Bramble, his shell open, surrounded by a bubble of soft blue Light that he pulsed into her over and over. Madrid lay in a corner, being healed by his own Ghost. But nearest was Crow, leaning over the monster's corpse, one hand on her shoulder. His lips didn't move, but she heard his voice in her head. "Silvan. It's all right. Come back." That strange resonance was back, as if he was an echo of herself.

She stared at him, the anger and heat draining away. Crow had lowered his hood, his face bare for once. His yellow eyes were focused and intent. His hair, once jet black, now had a white streak in front. His hair was short on one side and long on the other, so the white streak trailed nearly to his shoulder.

"Crow?" she thought.

"There you are," he said aloud, reaching up for her good hand. "Here. Slide down."

As soon as she moved, the room pitched. Her stomach rolled with nausea. "Look out," she said. Then she vomited all over Crow's boots.

Afterwards, she sat on a rock and shivered until she thought her teeth would shatter. Madrid sat on one side and Crow sat on the other.

"I'm sorry," she said over and over. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," they assured her. Madrid asked, "What happened?"

She held up her hand, the old slash oozing fluid, the new slash bleeding down her sleeve. "I touched the cryptolith, and it filled me with rage. I've never been that angry in my life. It was like I joined a sea of angry, murderous voices. It made my sidearm lethal to the Wrathborn. I was angrier than he was."

Crow and Madrid exchanged worried glances over her head.

"Do you still hear them?" Crow asked.

Silvan shook her head. "All I could hear was Bramble." She looked up at Crow. "And you. Talking in my head. Are you telepathic?"

"I don't know," Crow said, looking troubled. "I was trying to talk to you through our Ghosts. Are you sure you didn't hear me that way?"

"That must have been it," Silvan said, turning away. "That had to be it." Information she had read about Awoken psychic powers flashed through her head in neon letters. She was in deep trouble, now. But she couldn't face dealing with it. She was too cold and sick.

"Let's get you to the surface," Madrid said. "You can transmat to your ship from there."

"Don't forget Omar," Silvan said, pointing to the machine gun where it lay against the wall.

Crow picked up the weapon with a sudden grin. "This is Omar?"

"No," Madrid said. "The gun is Xenophage. Omar is preserved inside it."

Crow opened the feed tray and studied the amber and its occupant. After a moment, he closed the gun and slung it over his shoulder. He was no longer smiling.

They took Silvan back to her ship, boarding it with her and helping her into her bunk. There they piled all her blankets over her, and Madrid fetched her a hot drink from the ship's galley. They didn't leave her until the shakes subsided, and her Ghost assured them that he would look after her.

Outside her ship, Madrid and Crow conferred.

"Wrathborn infection?" Madrid said.

"That's what it looked like," Crow replied. "Can Arath take Guardians?"

"I don't know." Madrid rubbed the back of his head. "Silvan better not go near any more cryptoliths."

"Agreed," Crow said. "But …" he gazed over his shoulder at her ship.

"What?" Madrid said.

Crow slowly grinned and pulled his hood up. "Didn't you think she was beautiful when she tore into the Wrathborn like that?"

Madrid glanced at the ship, then at Crow. "Let her alone. Like I said."

"Right, right," Crow said. But as he and Madrid returned to Spider's cave, Crow couldn't resist one more backward look at that ship, remembering the amazing girl it contained.


	2. Part 2: The Ghostless

Silvan shouldn't have left the Reef, but she did it anyway. She set course for Earth and jumped to near lightspeed as soon as her computer said it was safe. Then she sat in the pilot seat with her shredded hand in her lap, wrapping it in layers of gauze every time more blood soaked through.

"Why didn't you have that new cut treated?" Bramble asked, scanning her hand with anxious flicks of his shell. "This one is more poisoned than the last. More dangerous."

"I can't stay, Bram," Silvan said in a low voice.

When she said nothing more, only stared out the window with a desolate look in her silver eyes, Bramble said, "But why? Crow could have helped you."

Without moving or looking at her Ghost, Silvan said, "Crow spoke inside my head. That wasn't you transmitting it, was it?"

Bramble went very still. After a moment, he said quietly, "No."

Silvan met his gaze. "Do yourself a favor. Access my database in the case over there. Read about Awoken telepathic resonance." She watched him do it and waited for the explosion.

It came eight seconds later. "No!" Bramble shrieked, throwing his shell open. "Great Traveler, no!"

"That's why we left," Silvan said.

Bramble flew around and around the cockpit, his eye cycling from blue, to green, to red, and back to blue. He arrived back at Silvan's shoulder. "Oh star-child, why did this have to happen? What am I supposed to do?"

"We're never going to see him again," Silvan said. "The resonance hadn't strengthened yet. I'd barely noticed it until he spoke in my head."

"Did you try to speak to him?" Bramble asked.

Silvan shook her head. "Why would I? He already has an awful crush on me. I don't want him to find out that we're …" She rubbed her face with her good hand. "Oh, why did this have to happen? He's Uldren Sov, even if he doesn't remember. Couldn't he have resonated with one of his fangirls? I know he has them."

"I do wish you'd gotten the formula for that salve," Bramble said, looking at her hand. "Hive infections are notoriously bad. Do you realize what will happen if we have to go back to him for more?"

"Oh, Light," Silvan groaned. "I don't want to think of it. Telepathic resonance is extremely rare! Why did it have to happen to me and him?"

"The Traveler is playing matchmaker?" Bramble suggested.

"Don't even joke," Silvan said, glaring at him. "We'll get home and I'll have Jayesh heal my hand. He healed worm venom that one time, remember? He'll fix my hand in five minutes, and we never have to see Crow again."

* * *

The trouble was, Jayesh had been on Europa for a month and was not expected to return any time soon.

Silvan checked into the Tower's hospital and resigned herself to drugs and shots and questions. But the neurotoxin was aggressive and resistant to all medications in the Vanguard database. Nobody knew what Crow had used to make a healing salve, nor how he could have whipped it up in a few minutes.

Silvan grew sicker with every passing day. Finally, after a week's suffering, she crept out of the hospital, crawled back into her ship, and set course for the Reef.

"But I'm only staying near Crow for a few minutes," Silvan said, slumped in her seat with her eyes closed. "I'm picking up more salve and getting out of there." Her hand was swollen and blackened under the bandages. It no longer bled, but it oozed a foul green fluid. Silvan burned with fever. As the ship winged toward the asteroid belt, she deliriously told Bramble, "Nobody is cutting my hand off, understand? I keep my hand."

"Nobody will hurt you, Silvan," he reassured her. "You'll feel better soon, you'll see."

She dozed in her seat. When she awakened, Bramble was just docking the ship at the Tangled Shore. She unbuckled her flight harness. It was hard work. "Tell them what's wrong," she said. "I need to rest."

She closed her aching eyes. When she opened them again, her good hand still held the harness buckle. Madrid stooped over her, one cool hand against her forehead. "Silvan, this is bad. I've got to bring you inside."

"Oh, hi, Madrid," Silvan said, looking up at him in surprise. She climbed out of her seat and nearly fell, but Madrid caught her. He looked at her hand and his mouth compressed in a line. "You didn't treat it, did you?"

"The Tower hospital tried everything," Silvan said. "Nobody knows what Crow used."

"I'll ask him," Madrid said. "Here, I'll carry you. You can't walk that far."

As he lifted her off her feet, Silvan said, "Never mention this again."

"Never," Madrid said with a straight face.

Silvan closed her tired eyes again and went away for a while.

When she returned, she was lying on a cot somewhere in Spider's cave network. It was a quiet corner behind a huge ether tank, with a single glow rod stuck in the ceiling for light. She knew Crow was nearby before she even opened her eyes. His resonance echoed her thoughts, amplifying them. She also felt his anxiety like cold sweat on her own skin. He was bathing her hand in a bucket of hot liquid, and it burned like acid.

"Don't take my hand off," she begged, turning her head. "I need it."

"Shh," Crow said, pushing back his hood so she could see his face. His pale blue skin was more grayish than usual. "I'm treating the infection. You won't lose your hand, I promise you."

His assurance quieted her restlessness, even if his anxiety persisted. Silvan watched him soak her hand in the bucket. Then he dried it on a cloth and applied the salve. It burned terribly. Tears filled her eyes, and she bit her lips to keep from crying.

Crow gazed at her, wonderingly. But Spider called, and he had to leave. Madrid sat beside her cot and watched her.

"Keep Crow away," Silvan whispered.

Madrid blinked. "Why? He's the only one who knows how to treat the poison like that. He has to keep an eye on you."

Silvan was too ashamed to explain it. When Crow returned, she simply turned her face to the wall and put up a mental block of prime numbers. She must not let him realize what was happening: that she was his perfect psychic match. He already had a crush on her. What would he do if he found out that she was his perfect mate, their minds attuned like instruments in an orchestra?

He must not find out. She wouldn't let him.

* * *

"There is a famous warlock named Osiris," Spider said to Crow. The huge Eliksni sat with his lower set of hands holding a tablet resting on his paunch. His upper hands gestured as he spoke. "Legendary in his time. Exiled from the City for heresy against the Traveler." He lifted the tablet a fraction. "His Ghost was just killed."

Crow kept his face impassive, but inwardly, he was startled. If a Guardian was that powerful, how did they lose their Ghost? He kept his thoughts away from Glint and the explosive in his shell.

Spider gestured to Crow. "Find this … ex-Guardian. Bring him to me. I have business to discuss with him."

Crow nodded. "Yes, Baron."

Glint appeared, flying low to signal his subservience. He flew to Spider's assistant, Shank, and downloaded the location information from her tablet. Then he returned to Crow and vanished. Privately, in Crow's head, he said, "Earth's Moon. Far from here."

Crow kept his thoughts to himself. On one hand, any excuse to flee the Shore and Spider's constant demands were welcome. He could hang around Earth for a week without Spider becoming suspicious. On the other hand, Silvan was extremely ill, and he was afraid to leave her. But his ship only had one seat.

As he turned to leave, Spider added, "Fly fast, little bird. Guardians who lose their Ghosts are often … unstable."

"I'll leave at once," Crow said, his heart sinking.

He first went to his workroom and retrieved his shotgun and sword. He had Glint store them, then he stood and gazed into his metal box with the sealed bottles of mutagens. He'd found them in Spider's black market warehouse, sold to him by some shady dealer. These chemicals were used by the Hive to achieve new mutations among their broods. The biology of the cryptoliths was Hive, and they responded to the same stimuli. So did the neurotoxin that had so afflicted Silvan. At least, it would have, if he'd treated it in time. 

He carried the box of mutagens out of his shop and back to the passage where Silvan rested with Madrid watching over her. She glanced up as he approached, then hastily looked away. Probably ashamed for him to see her like this. Her red hair was loose and unbraided, streaming across the pillow. She wore a civilian shirt and pants instead of her customary armored robe. Her cheeks were flushed a faint rose from the fever. She looked out of place and ordinary, there in Spider's lair. Just a young Awoken woman who had run afoul of a cryptolith--except she was not as young as she looked. He tried to remind himself of that.

"This is what I used to create the salve," Crow said, setting down the metal box. "I'll have Glint give you the directions. Spider's sending me on another mission. I'll be gone four days, maybe five."

"I'll look after her," Madrid said. He shook Crow's hand.

Crow hesitated, then said in a low voice, "Don't stay here. If Spider learns that a Guardian is weak, he may exploit her in some way."

"Right," Madrid said, frowning at Silvan. She looked up, eyes wide.

For a moment, Crow met her gaze. It entered his mind that he didn't know her at all--her likes and dislikes, her favorite foods, what sort of scientist she was. Seeing her fight and use Light had been like beholding an angel from heaven, itself. But now, he was about to leave, and if his treatment failed, she would be dead before he returned.

Abruptly, he knelt beside the cot and took her good hand. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should have taken better care of you. And I never … spoke to you. About yourself. I'm not very good at … at having friends."

For a second, he almost thought he felt her in his mind, the way he did Glint. Sour fear mixed with a sweetness he didn't understand, but he associated it with her. For a second, he envisioned them fighting side by side, an unstoppable fireteam.

"I'm sorry, too," Silvan whispered. "I'll be all right. Don't worry. You have enough sadness without worrying about me."

He smiled. "Are you reading my mind again?"

She winced. "I think I was. Sorry. It's hard not to."

"Am I defenseless, then?" he said, trying to bring a smile to those colorless lips.

After a moment, Silvan did smile, faintly. "Oh, go away, or Spider will chew your neck."

Crow rose to his feet and pulled on his hood. "Now, that's a mental image I never wanted."

He nodded to Madrid and strode out of the cavern, his heart oddly lightened.

* * *

Once Crow had departed, Madrid turned to Silvan. "He's right. You can't stay here."

"I know," she said, sitting up and cradling her aching hand. "I don't want Spider to enslave me, too. Help me, I don't think I can walk all the way outside."

"It's twenty-two degrees outside, with wind chill," Madrid said. "Tell Bramble to transmat you something warmer."

Her Ghost appeared. "Already on it. Stand straight, star-child. Arms out."

Silvan straightened and held out her arms. Bramble downloaded the data in his core and converted it to matter. A warm, heavy warlock robe appeared around her, first sketched in light, then turning solid and dark. It had a fur collar that she pulled in against her face. "Good choice, Bram," she murmured.

Madrid picked up the box of mutagens. "We take your ship, I suppose?"

Silvan looked at him in sudden comprehension. "You haven't replaced yours, yet?"

He had crashed his old cruiser a few months earlier. Silvan had assumed he'd bought a new one, since he'd made it to the Reef, somehow.

Madrid shrugged. "I've been working for Spider to earn the glimmer. Can't say I'm fond of the work, but it pays well. I caught a ride out here with some other Guardians. Might as well get you back to Earth, have you looked after. I might make a down payment on a new cruiser, while I'm at it."

They walked together through the passages that honeycombed the asteroid. Outside, the wind was blowing curtains of dust. The sun was setting behind the cove's rim, and the rapidly changing temperatures churned the wind to a fury. Madrid and Silvan pulled their helmets on and waded into the storm, the wind sucking the heat from their bodies.

By the time they reached Silvan's ship, both of them were hypothermic and stumbling. They climbed into the little galley and huddled together for warmth. Their Ghosts appeared and transmatted them coffee packs and chemical warming pads they could tuck inside their clothes.

Slowly their temperatures returned to normal. Silvan was wondering if it was safe to crawl into her bunk and sleep, when Madrid's Ghost, Rose, said, "Incoming call. From the Vanguard."

Madrid stiffened. "Play it."

Rose projected a hologram of Commander Zavala's face. He looked grave. "Guardian Madrid. I've just received word that Osiris, warlock and exile, has lost his Ghost, Sagira. He is headed to the Moon to attack the Hive responsible, and he requested you, personally." Zavala sighed and closed his eyes. "The pain a Guardian feels upon the loss of his Ghost is immeasurable. Osiris is mortal, now. Do not let him kill himself."

Madrid and Silvan exchanged a wide-eyed look.

"Osiris?" Silvan exclaimed. "I thought he was split across timelines or something. They kicked him out because he was so obsessed with Vex time travel stuff. You mean he was a normal Guardian who could lose a Ghost?"

"Yes, he was," Madrid said quietly. "I worked with him, remember. Brilliant mind, but his Ghost kept him grounded. Without her …" He shook his head. "We'd better get moving. Try to rest during the trip."

Madrid went to the cockpit and began the takeoff sequence. Silvan went to her bunk and wrapped up in blankets, robe and all. She dozed off twice, once before takeoff, and the next as they departed the Reef and gained orbit.

"Seven hours to Earth," Madrid called down the passage. "Two course corrections."

"Plenty of time to sleep," Silvan murmured. She held up her good hand. "Bramble?"

Her Ghost appeared. She lifted him out of the air and nestled him on the pillow beside her head. She drifted to sleep holding him, as she had every night as a newly-resurrected child. Bramble closed the shutters over his eye and rested, too.

* * *

Crow was ahead of them, taking a slightly different course. Most Guardians let their nav computers plot their jumps through the solar system, but Crow liked to do it manually. The mathematics were a fun challenge. Glint applied his computer-like brain, too, and they argued numbers for a few minutes. The result was a jump with only one course correction, flying straight to Venus, slingshotting around it, and heading to Earth without losing inertia.

As they flew, Crow said, "Glint, is it possible to contact Osiris? Normally, you'd speak to his Ghost, but …"

"Poor Sagira," Glint murmured. "She was so proud of her Guardian. But she never let him forget that he was human. She _kept_ him human." He opened his shell and expanded into a sphere of Light. "Let me contact some other Ghosts. Maybe they can help me track Osiris."

Crow reclined in his seat, watching the ship's instruments as the NLS drive hummed at his back. The jumpship belonged to Spider and had his symbol burned on both wings. Crow had salvaged one ship before, but by the time he landed it on Earth-- _crashed_ was too strong a word but closer to the truth--it was no longer spaceworthy. He was much more careful with his boss's ships. Crash one of these and Spider would make his life very miserable, indeed.

"I think I can reach Osiris," Glint reported, closing his shell and shrinking back into a small orchid-shape. "He's carrying portable radio equipment to replace Sagira's communications. But we have to be close to the Moon and not be traveling in NLS."

"Right," Crow said. "I hope he's reasonable about going to see Spider. I assume it's about dealing with the Cryptoliths."

"One would think," Glint replied. He turned and studied Crow's pensive face. After a moment, he traced the side of his head with a gentle healing beam.

"You don't have to do that anymore," Crow said. "The psychic damage is gone."

Crow had resurrected with extensive damage in his brain from the trauma he had undergone in his past life. It had been months before he could stand to have Glint speak inside his head. The neural symbiosis had given him terrible headaches for a time. Glint had healed him in his sleep every night for a year. Between this steady treatment, and being killed at the hands of Guardians and resurrecting out of fresh Light and quanta, Crow was well. Mostly.

"I still like to check," Glint said softly. "I don't like these dreams you've been having."

"Me neither," Crow muttered. "I mean, I like dreams about flying. Those are my favorites. But they always end … badly." He brooded for a moment. "Do you think Madrid and Silvan might understand if I told them?"

"They might," Glint said. "Guardians do have strange dreams sometimes."

Crow gazed at the nav computer without seeing it. His mind's eye was busy with silky red hair and silver eyes, and a sword made of lightning.

Glint sensed the direction of his partner's thoughts and made a sound like a sigh. "You don't even know her."

"I know, and it kills me," Crow said. "If Silvan dies before I can get back, I'll … I'll regret it forever." The childish words were all he could find to voice the deep, black pit of regret inside him. "I know Spider told me to back off. And so did Madrid. But I can still invite her hunting, can't I? Work together as professionals? As Guardians?"

Glint read his friend's hopeless longing and it pained him. He searched for something encouraging to say. "Of course, going hunting with her is permissible. We have a lot of Wrathborn to root out if we're to cut off Xivu Arath's influence."

Crow smiled and patted Glint's shell. "Thanks for being my sounding board, Glint. It must be pretty stupid, watching your Chosen make a fool of himself over a pretty face."

Glint watched Crow's expression and read the flow of his thoughts. For the first time, it dawned on him that maybe Crow's crush wasn't natural. It had happened suddenly, and with a girl who admitted to being psychic. Glint's eye narrowed. But he kept this thought to himself.

Time passed. Crow and Glint played poker on Glint’s holographic screen, then Crow napped so he’d be fresh for the mission. He awoke as the computer automatically dropped them out of NLS.

“Approaching Earth’s moon,” Glint announced. He opened his shell. “Now, let’s see if I can reach Osiris.”

Crow switched the ship to manual controls and guided the ship into the moon’s orbit. Flying always gave him a surge of happiness and contentment. His hands seemed to remember a ship’s controls, and how it felt to maneuver in low gravity. Maybe he’d been a pilot in his past life. A good one.

“I’m picking up a signal,” Glint said, watching the moon’s cratered surface roll past. “It’s faint. Underground, I think. Patching it through.”

Crow keyed the radio. “This is White Corvid, seeking Guardian Osiris. Come in, Osiris.”

The radio fizzed with static for a moment. Then a voice replied, “White Corvid? Who is this? This is Osiris.”

“I’ve been sent to extend an invitation to the Reef,” Crow said. “There is a problem with the Hive.”

“I’m tracking the High Celebrant of Xivu Arath,” Osiris said, sounding peeved. “It’s the one responsible for the cryptoliths on the Shore. I assume that’s what you’re talking about?”

“That’s right,” Crow said, giving Glint an uneasy look. “It’s a big concern to many people.”

“If I can take down the High Celebrant, it will no longer be an issue,” Osiris snapped.

“By yourself?” Crow exclaimed. “Sir, you’re Ghostless. If this High Celebrant is as dangerous as the cryptoliths, themselves--”

“Then come and help me, White Corvid,” Osiris snarled. “Or Crow, or whoever you are.”

“I told you that callsign was too obvious,” Glint said in an undertone.

Crow pretended to backhand him. “Coming in now,” he said into the radio. “Wait for backup, sir.”

“I’m done waiting!” Osiris barked.

Crow guided the ship down into the moon’s thin atmosphere, the remnants of terraforming in the long-distant Golden Age. A huge hole yawned in the moon’s surface: a city of the Hive called the Hellmouth. Crow set the ship to return to orbit, worked the transmat controls, and teleported straight to the surface.

He arrived in the middle of a gang of Hive Thralls, which were skeletal, eyeless creatures with long teeth and claws. They hissed and shrieked in surprise. Crow summoned a handful of knives made of Light and flung them into the aliens. Each knife found its mark in the skull or throat of a thrall. They fell, dead or wounded. 

Crow donned his helmet and pulled his hood over that. Best to remain anonymous when other Guardians might be around. They hated him worse than the Hive did, and the Hive’s religion was hatred.

“Glint,” he said, “can you track Osiris?”

Glint was invisible, transmatted inside Crow’s gear. “I have a lock on his radio signal. Adding navpoints to your helmet HUD.”

The navpoints led straight into the Hellmouth. Crow silently asked Glint for his sword, Abide the Return. It appeared in his hands, flickering with data. He belted on its scabbard and set out, forcing away the flicker of dread in his heart.


	3. Synchronized

Silvan groggily awoke to the sensation of Madrid shaking her. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"We've landed on Earth's moon, behind the Vanguard base," Madrid said. "I'm going to transmat outside. You stay here and wait for me. I'm after Osiris."

Silvan pushed back the blankets and sat up. Her whole body ached, and her infected hand was stiff to the shoulder. But when she unwrapped the bandage, both wounds had improved in color, the flesh more pink and less green and gray. It didn't hurt as much, either.

"I'd better put more salve on it," Madrid said, inspecting her hand. "Looks like it's working. How do you feel?" He walked into the galley and opened the metal box.

"It doesn't feel like it ought to be cut off," Silvan said. She held out her hand for Bramble to scan. "Do I want to know what that salve is made of?"

"No," said Madrid.

Silvan tried not to ask, but the longer she waited, the more mystified she became. "Since none of the City medications could touch it … maybe just a hint?"

"Hive mutagens," Madrid said.

Silvan shuddered violently and stared at her hand. "Shouldn't I be turning into a Hive?"

"You'll need to ask Crow," Madrid said. "He's the mind behind the cure." He brought her a small amount mixed in a cup. Silvan spread it on her wounds, wincing at the fresh burning pain.

"All right," Madrid said. "I'll be back soon. Hopefully Osiris isn't dead."

"Wait," Silvan said, snatching a roll of gauze out of a compartment and wrapping her hand. "I want to go with you."

Madrid frowned. "Silv …"

"You're not going out there alone!" Silvan exclaimed. "We were here a few months ago, remember? The Nightmares are still here. You're not just going to disappear, driven mad by some hidden guilt."

"I've made peace with mine," Madrid said. "I'm more concerned about you."

"I settled with mine," Silvan replied defensively. "No Nightmares have bothered me since."

"Yes, well." Madrid gestured to the weapons locker, where Xenophage was tucked away. "You can't work a machine gun with one hand. The thing is almost the same size as you."

"I have my sidearm," Silvan said. She mimicked the grip. "My bad hand can support my good one. And I can use my Light if things get bad."

Madrid gave her a doubtful look.

"Please?" Silvan said.

Madrid turned to her Ghost. "Bramble, is she feverish?"

"No, thank the Light," Bramble said. "Her fever broke two hours ago."

"All right," Madrid said. "We're not going in, looking for a fight. We're going to sneak. Follow my lead. You have to think like a Hunter. Understand?"

Silvan bounded off the bunk and hugged him. "You're the best, Madrid! Let me grab my boots."

Madrid stood there, trying not to roll his eyes, as Silvan fumbled her boots on. She grabbed two sidearms from her weapons locker and buckled them in their holsters on either hip. She added extra ammo pouches and faced him expectantly. "Let's go."

Silvan had worked with Hunters for long enough that she knew how they operated. Madrid led her to the Hellmouth by a roundabout route, striking a back road used by the Hive and following a side passage that joined the Hellmouth lower down. There they lurked in corners, or catwalked along the tops of arches and ledges to avoid the aliens below.

The Hive seemed happy today, if such a thing could be said of such foul, zombie-looking creatures. Thralls and Acolytes formed huge groups that sang and danced, their horrible voices filling the air with harmonic screeches. Knights stood at attention along the walls, their bone armor decorated with trinkets and red paint. Worst of all were the witches in their wispy robes, floating through the air like spirits. They led the aliens in songs that could split skulls and tear souls from bodies.

"Do we want to know what they're celebrating?" Madrid asked Silvan in a low voice.

"I don't know," she replied, steadying herself on a narrow ledge. "I had Bramble check their calendar, and it's not one of their holidays."

"The Hive have a calendar?" Madrid said.

"Oh yes," Silvan replied. "They still keep the time table of their home planet, with it's five hundred and forty-three day year and fifteen seasons. Their holidays--"

"Shh," Madrid interrupted, raising a hand.

They had been creeping along a ledge high up in a curving corridor. The floor was crowded by two huge water pipes that traveled down the passage, ending in the room ahead. This was the Temple of Crota, a particularly nasty Hive prince who had sent thousands of Guardians to their final deaths before the Vanguard learned how to return the favor. As they drew closer to the room, Nightmares appeared: the shadowy figures of slain Guardians that hung in midair, spreading an aura of fear and despair. Silvan closed her psychic sense down and held her mind shut as they passed the nearest Nightmares.

They rounded the corner and entered an antechamber. The pipes plunged beneath a stone platform. On top of this platform was a huge cryptolith. It was twice the size of the ones on the Tangled Shore: a spiraling horn of layers of razor-sharp chitin, ridged and riddled with holes. Blood streaked its sides from numerous ritual sacrifices. Hive bodies littered the floor. Still more Hive danced around the cryptolith, their movements frenzied and careless. Many of them ran up and cut themselves on the cryptolith, then rejoined the dance in a greater frenzy. 

Leading the ritual was a huge Knight in armor the Guardians had never seen before. The Hive generally carved their armor from bone, but this one wore metal. His shoulders supported huge pauldrons, and his breastplate and greaves were etched with harsh, angular designs. Teeth lined his helmet. He stood beside the cryptolith, inside the circle of worshipers, chanting a series of words over and over.

"What's he saying?" Madrid whispered.

Silvan wasn't well-versed in the Hive's language, but the chant was simple. It hurt her brain to translate. The English words did not burn with the fire and glory of the Hive tongue.

"All tithes to Xivu Arath. War dominant. Endless."

Madrid said nothing, but he lifted his heavy sniper rifle from its strap across his back. He crouched and raised his rifle, peering through the scope at the huge knight's head.

Before he could pull the trigger, a grenade flew into the ritual circle. It bounced once and detonated with an ear-splitting crack. A quarter of the worshipers went flying with limbs missing. The huge Knight staggered and drew its sword. It roared and stomped across the cave. Another Guardian sprang out from behind a pillar and hammered the Knight with auto rifle fire. The bullets sparked off the thick armor.

Silvan had never seen Osiris before. Still, this had to be him--a warlock in robes decorated with feathers, and a bird-head helmet with the beak curving over the forehead. Osiris also wore a cloth across his face, so she couldn't make out his expression. But his movements were quick, furious, lethal.

The huge Knight lifted a shield and protected itself from the gunfire. It roared something to its surviving followers and ran off down an adjoining passage, deeper into the temple. The remaining worshipers threw themselves at Osiris in a crazed mass.

Silvan leaped down from her ledge, drew a sidearm, and began firing. It felt like she might as well be spitting on the aliens, for all the notice they took of her bullets. Still, she popped several of them in their domed heads, and others between their three eyes. Madrid's sniper rifle blew the heads off the bigger assailants. Osiris ducked behind a pillar to use as cover.

In a few minutes, the aliens were dead, their bodies lying in contorted positions. Madrid and Silvan made their way to Osiris.

"Look," Madrid said, "you've suffered a loss, but you can't fight the whole Hellmouth by yourself."

"I only want the High Celebrant," Osiris snarled, glaring from behind his mask. "Help me hunt it, Madrid. I know you're capable. Bring your friend." He strode up the passage, tracking the huge Knight.

Silvan glanced at Madrid to see him clench his teeth. Together they hurried after the warlock.

The passage ended in a huge room with a monument to Crota in the center. It was a huge altar supported on six arches, every inch of it engraved with Hive runes. Pipes and hoses led everywhere, and Silvan was afraid to think what they might be for.

The High Celebrant stood before the altar, waiting for them. It laughed and raised its sword to Osiris in mock salute. Then it stepped sideways. Half its body flared with black and green and disappeared. It was escaping into the Ascendant Realm.

Osiris charged forward, firing as he went. But the alien merely held up its shield as if warding off flies and disappeared into thin air.

Osiris swore in a language Silvan didn't know. He turned toward them, lowering his rifle. "We'll have to track it and draw it out. If you see fit to help me--"

A smaller Hive Knight in regular bone armor stepped out from beneath the altar, possibly an honor guard of some kind. It kicked Osiris in the back, sending him crashing to the floor, his rifle bouncing from his hands. The Knight raised its sword to deliver a killing blow. Silvan and Madrid whipped up their weapons.

But before anyone could fire, the Knight dropped its sword and collapsed, a blade protruding from its chest. Another Guardian stood behind it in the shadows. He wrenched the blade out of the corpse and stepped forward. "I told you this place was too dangerous for the Ghostless."

Silvan gaped. Crow was here, rescuing Osiris? How?

Crow's Ghost appeared at his shoulder. "Looks like everyone's okay, so that's good!" He turned to his partner. "Go on, introduce yourself."

"They call me Crow," he said to Osiris.

Osiris hadn't even tried to sit up. He lay propped up on one elbow, eyes wide. At this introduction, he waved one hand in a very small greeting. He obviously recognized Crow immediately.

"My boss would like a word with you," Crow said, gesturing at the mark of the Spider emblazoned on his chest. "Will you agree to come with me?" He didn't threaten, but a hint of it lurked in his voice. At that moment, Silvan was certain that Crow could easily subdue Osiris if he had to.

But Osiris climbed to his feet. After a moment's hesitation, he extended a hand. "Pleased to meet you, Crow. I'll accompany you to the Shore. This business with Xivu Arath affects us all."

Crow nodded. Then he glanced at Madrid and Silvan and lifted a hand. "Fancy meeting you two here. Our chances of survival on the way out are higher with the four of us." His gaze lingered on Silvan for a second, but her helmet hid her face. He pulled his own helmet back o , tugging his hood over it.

They retraced their steps and left the Temple of Crota by a side passage. Osiris kept sneaking glances at Crow, but didn't say much. They were too busy dealing with the Hive to talk, anyway. News of a Lightbearer intrusion into the Temple had spread fast. Aliens who were already in a high state of excitement from the Celebrant's worship were eager to prove themselves by slaughtering the Guardians and drinking their Light.

Madrid kept Silvan toward the rear of their party, shielding her, since she was not in top fighting condition. She wouldn't have noticed that Crow was protecting her, too, if not for the telepathic resonance. It was growing harder to block him out, no matter how many mental walls she built around her mind. 

It didn't occur to her that this could be advantageous until Crow surveyed a passage a few yards ahead of the rest of them. A glimpse of what he saw flashed through her mind: two witches and an army of thralls headed their way. Crow fell back and signaled for the team to prepare to fight. He drew his sword and tackled the first wave of thralls as they rounded the corner. But Silvan sensed that he was more concerned about the witches. So she raised her sidearm to the exact spot where the first witch would appear, and waited.

It rounded the corner and took a burst of lead between the eyes. The witch shrieked as she died and floated to the ground in a mass of filmy gown. The second witch conjured a shield in a bubble around herself, but Osiris flung a fireball from his fingertips. It pierced the shield and burned the witch to ash.

Silvan thought to her Ghost, "Maybe being synchronized to Crow isn't so bad."

"I think it'd be very useful if you stopped resisting so hard," Bramble replied. "You'd pick up more details and not just glimpses."

"How do you know?"

"I'm studying it, silly. It's fascinating. Talk more later, there's a squadron of knights coming up behind us."

"Knights," Silvan said aloud. But Crow had wheeled around as soon as Bramble had informed her, as if he'd heard. Silvan retreated toward him as their group changed positions to face this new threat. Drawing closer increased the resonance. She felt his strain and tension, his frustration with the constant stream of enemies, his concern for his team. Buried in it all was a special splinter of worry for her. When he looked at her, he saw her small stature and her bandaged hands. Silvan was not short, but Madrid, Crow, and Osiris were all taller than she was. Over and over, she felt this thought from him. _She's small, she's hurt._

He didn't know she read this thought, and she had no desire to interact with him mentally. She kept her mind passive and merely adjusted her fighting style to support his. When he engaged a Knight sword to sword, Silvan shot its knees. When he took a savage blow from the knight's shield, she cast a healing circle on the ground to rejuvenate him. She worked to support Osiris and Madrid, too, but Crow was easiest. She always knew what he would do next, and what help he would need.

By the time they escaped the Hellmouth, all four of them were weary from battle. As they trudged back toward the Vanguard base, Osiris said, "Crow, I promised to return to the Reef with you. But I'm afraid I need time to … recover."

"I plan to spend the next few days on Earth," Crow said. "Take time to rest."

Osiris gave him a long, careful look. Then he inspected Madrid and Silvan, as if trying to learn what they thought about Crow. "I'll be in touch," he said. He walked off toward his own ship.

Crow watched him go, arms folded. Then he turned to Madrid. "Take Silvan home. Make her rest. She should not have come out here."

"I wanted to help save Osiris," Silvan said. "And help Madrid not have Nightmares."

Crow took her bandaged hand in both of his own. "This needs rest," he said quietly, gazing through her helmet's face plate. "I can't bear to think of your Light being quenched because of an injury. Let it heal."

Silvan gazed through his own face plate into his bony face, seeing the gaunt thinness of too few meals. Her heart ached for him. "Will you come to the City?"

He shook his head and released her hand. "No. I'll probably go to the European continent. What they call the Dead Zone. It's peaceful there." What he didn't say was, _Come find me, I like you._

Silvan had to clamp down on her own mind to keep from answering. He must not know that she was attuned to him. She nodded and withdrew her hand. Small talk. Cover up the resonance. "You'll have to tell me about how mutagens can heal wounds."

"Yes, I imagine I ought to explain," Crow said.

"We'll catch up later," Madrid said. "Come on, Silvan. See you, Crow."

The group went their separate ways. Crow headed for Europe, while the other three flew toward the City. It was the Last Safe City, built beneath the Traveler that floated in the sky: a great, mysterious sphere. It emanated Light, refreshing the mind and healing the body, doubling and tripling the average human lifespan.

As they entered a holding pattern around the City, Madrid said, "Silvan."

"Hm?" Silvan had been staring out the window, head in hand, for most of the trip.

Madrid glanced at her, brows furrowed. "Explain what happened back there."

Silvan didn't stir. "What happened?"

"The fights. You and Crow. You anticipated his every move. Are you reading his mind? Because that's a terrible invasion of privacy."

Silvan finally straightened and met his gaze. What should she say? Could she even explain it? She opened her mouth, then closed it and sighed.

"Silv, please," Madrid said. "I know how strong your psychic powers are. You're abusing them. And you're using them on a guy who already can't defend against you. He resurrected with psychic damage."

Every word stabbed her like a knife blade. She pressed a fist to her forehead. "I don't think that's it."

"Then what is it?" Madrid said. "Help me understand, here."

Bramble appeared at her shoulder. "You can trust Madrid," he whispered. "He won't give you away."

Silvan tried to find the words. Stalling for time, she said, "How did he have psychic damage? The resurrection should have fixed all that."

"Resurrections aren't one size fits all," Bramble said. "Sometimes a Ghost finds the spark of their Guardian and has to rebuild the body around it from dust. With an actual corpse to revive, a Ghost doesn't have to rebuild everything from scratch. Sometimes it's less than ideal, though. They can come back with memories. In Crow's case …"

"Uldren was a shell of a man when he died," Madrid said. "Hollowed out by years of neglect and abuse by his sister, the Queen. At the end, he'd actually been Taken. His eyes were black with Darkness. He didn't know what he was doing because something else was controlling him. A man doesn't come back from that very easily, even with the Light to restore him."

Silvan stared at her hands in her lap, tears burning her eyes. "I didn't know," she whispered. Now it looked like she'd been hacking the brain of an injured man. Could the resonance be a result of his residual damage? Maybe her own stupid abilities were tricking her. Maybe there was no resonance, and she was auto-reading his mind without meaning to, and without permission. That was a crime among the Awoken, punishable by imprisonment or death.

Madrid watched her. "So … what are you doing to him, anyway?"

Silvan took the plunge and told the truth. "Have you ever heard of Awoken telepathic resonance?"

Madrid frowned. "Yes. It's extremely rare."

Silvan nodded. "My mind and Crow's are … attuned. We run on the same frequency, or whatever you call it. The longer we're together, the stronger the resonance becomes." She clenched her fist and slammed it against the bulkhead. "And I don't _want_ it! I didn't ask for this! He's Uldren Sov! I don't want to be attuned to Uldren Sov!"

"Hold on," Madrid said. "You're saying that he can communicate with you the same way?"

"Any time I see him, the resonance grows stronger," Silvan said, trying to control the tremor in her voice. "I could shield against him at first, and he shielded against me. But the stronger it gets, the less we can block it out. When we were in the Hellmouth, I didn't bother shielding at all. I needed to play off his fighting style. And it worked."

"It did," Madrid muttered. "Does he know?"

"I don't think so," Silvan replied. The churned emotions inside her were calming a little. Madrid wasn't accusing her of lying, at least. Bramble was right that she could trust him. "I don't want him to know. It's why I took off and came home instead of letting him treat my hand again. If the resonance grows any stronger, he's going to notice. He already has a crush on me. Do you know what will happen then?"

Madrid nodded slowly, guiding the ship into a landing pattern at last. He didn't speak until they had been guided into a free spot in the Tower hanger. As the engines wound down, he said, "You'd have to marry him, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," Silvan said. "And he's _Uldren freaking Sov,_ Madrid! I can't do it!"

Madrid sat in silence, staring at nothing. At last he said, "There's nothing to be done now, Silvan. You need to rest. I need to report in and talk to Osiris. His arrival is going to cause a stir. Read up on your resonance problem and figure out if you can reverse it."

Silvan nodded, although her heart sank. She _had_ read up on it and there _was_ no reversing it, any more than she could rearrange the parts of her own prefrontal cortex. But she didn't say it. Instead, she gathered her belongings and Xenophage in silence and went to her quarters.

* * *

Deep in the territory that had been Switzerland, Crow sat and watched the sun set. He'd made a small lair for himself inside an old hydroelectric dam that curved across the mountainside above a blue lake, next to an abandoned town called Trostland. A fragment of the Traveler had broken off during the Collapse. It had landed a few miles away, bleeding Light, and had contaminated the forest for miles around it. That's why the area was known as the Dead Zone. 

But the area retained much of its rugged beauty. The fall of humanity had not changed the mountains and the forests, and the animals went about their lives as they had for millennia. Crow sat on a ledge in the dam and watched a flock of birds wheel and circle above the lake below the dam, their wings flashing in the sunlight. He'd bathed in the lake to wash away any Hive contaminants, and was feeling much better.

"We did good today, Glint," Crow remarked. "We saved Osiris. That ought to win me some points with the Vanguard. Also, did you bring the sword?"

Glint appeared beside him, his blue digital eye somehow pleased. "The Hive Knight sword? Yes, I stashed it in my memory. It feels nasty, but you have your trophy."

"Good." Crow fingered the orchid-points of Glint's shell, like fondling the ears of a puppy. "Maybe, someday, the Guardians won't hate me. It felt good to work as a fireteam again."

"About that," Glint said, and hesitated.

Crow glanced at him. "What?"

"We need to talk about Silvan," Glint said.

“Let’s,” said Crow. “What do you think of her?” Silvan was a pleasant topic, made all the more pleasant by the loneliness of his surroundings.

“Well.” Glint bobbed a little in midair, as if trying to think of what to say. “You do realize she has fairly strong psychic powers?”

“I had wondered about that,” Crow said. “I kept thinking I sensed her thoughts sometimes. Especially today, fighting the Hive. But don’t Awoken have powers like that? I heard that somewhere.”

“Yes,” said Glint carefully. “It varies between individuals. Silvan’s are particularly strong. Does it strike you as odd that you were attracted to her from the first moment you met?”

“Uh, no,” Crow said, smiling. “She’s pretty. And nice.”

“You don’t think … maybe she put that into your mind? Manipulated your thoughts?”

“Wait,” Crow said, his smile fading. “You think she forced me to like her? With psychic powers?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Glint. “She’s a warlock, and warlocks are deep. Maybe she knew you in your past life and wants to control you.”

Crow leaned back and stretched his legs out, resting his chin on his chest. His mind replayed every interaction he’d had with Silvan, seeing her so ill from the infection, and then today, fighting alongside him against the Hive. It had been an unexpected pleasure to find her always there, helping him kill aliens, having a healing rift ready at just the right moment, anticipating his next target.

“I can’t see it,” Crow said at last. “She came to me because she was hurt, remember? She was really sick. She wasn’t trying to seduce me or anything. In fact, pretty much the opposite.”

“I’m just worried,” said Glint. “You instantly fall for a girl who is known to be a powerful psychic. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“It does, when you put it like that,” Crow said slowly. “But then … what if I’m psychic and don’t know it? What if I did something to her? Did you see the way we fought today? She was amazing. And she only had one good hand. And sidearms.”

“You?” Glint said, disturbed by this idea. “But then, wouldn’t she be forced to fall for you instead of the other way around?”

“Maybe?” Crow said. “All I know is that she reacted to my every move today. Remember when those two witches were coming, and I was freaking out about them? Silvan had her gun aimed right at the first one. She took it out before it could even get a shield up. I didn’t even say anything. She just knew.”

“She’s reading your mind,” Glint said flatly. “Constantly. She never asked your permission. Do you know what the Awoken do to psychics who invade people?”

“I’ve heard stories,” Crow said. He climbed to his feet and paced along the wide ledge, growing agitated. “I guess this is why you don’t fall for a girl you don’t know, huh?” He envisioned her silver eyes, gazing at him with trepidation, the way most Guardians did. He’d had that sense of her fear and illness, too, along with that undercurrent of sweetness. She was vulnerable in a way that stirred something in him. Not just physically vulnerable, because of her shredded hand, but her mind, in some way, was open to him.

“If she’s manipulating me, she’s not doing a very good job,” Crow said at last. He sat on the edge of the ledge and let his legs dangle over the half-mile drop. The sun had sunk out of sight by this time, but the clouds were a chaotic layering of orange and magenta, streaked with violet. “Whatever psychic power she’s using is a two-way street. I can see into her mind, too.”

“What do you see?” Glint asked.

Crow hesitated. “She’s afraid. Of me. It’s like she’s trying to keep me out, sometimes. But I can feel her anyway, and underneath she’s …”

Glint waited, sensing Crow’s thoughts subsiding into that private place inside him where he sometimes retreated. After a moment, Crow emerged again and said, “She’s sweet. I don’t know how else to describe it. She has a kind heart. And …” Realization struck him. “I could break that heart so easily. She’s fragile. That’s why she’s afraid of me.” He looked at Glint, seeking a reaction.

Glint blinked and looked down. “What is happening, then?”

“I don’t know,” Crow said, drumming a heel against the concrete. “Now that I think about it, she must be reading my mind to fight alongside me that way. Maybe she does it by accident? And she doesn't realize that I can read her mind, too?"

Suddenly a powerful urge gripped him to see her again, to talk to her about it, figure this out. But if she was afraid of him, she'd stay far away. Maybe Madrid could convince her to come along on more Wrathborn hunts.

"I'm obsessing about this," Crow said at last, digging his fingers into his hair. It was growing so long, he'd be hacking it off with a knife soon. "Come on, let's hunt some rabbits for dinner. I'm starving."

"There are feral chickens in the area," Glint said. "They will be roosting in the trees about this time and might be easier to locate."

Crow walked back along the ledge to a doorway that led inside the dam. "Let me grab my rifle. Nothing like a good hunt to take your mind off things."

Glint agreed and accompanied him inside.


	4. Resonance

Silvan loafed around the Tower for three days.

She reported to the Warlock Vanguard on her first day back. Ikora Rey was a dark-skinned woman with short, curly hair, and wore regal purple robes with an insignia of office on her right shoulder. Silvan's assignment had been only a patrol on the Tangled Shore. Her report about the strange cryptoliths and the way they drove people mad brought a look of deep concern to Ikora's eyes. Silvan displayed her injured hand and explained about another Guardian treating it without ever speaking Crow's name. If Ikora Rey found out that Uldren Sov was a Lightbearer--Uldren who had murdered her best friend in cold blood--she would likely go on the warpath.

Ikora put Silvan on medical leave until her hand healed. So Silvan watched a lot of videos, visited City restaurants, and hung out with her father, Ivaran. Ivaran was a Titan and home from a mission to Europa. He only wanted to soak in the sunshine for hours. Silvan didn't blame him. She also didn't tell him about Crow. If her father found out that she had resonance with Uldren Sov, he'd probably murder him with his bare hands.

Madrid left after a day, heading back to the Reef to hunt Wrathborn by himself. They didn’t speak about Silvan’s problem again, but it was comforting to know that she wasn’t bearing this particular burden alone.

So she loafed and relaxed and grew massively bored. She kicked around her apartment and organized all of the knicknacks she’d collected from the various planets and moons. She input the climate data she’d gathered on the Tangled Shore into a computer program, where the computer told her that none of it made sense and could not be modeled.

All the time, the problem with Crow loomed in the back of her mind. It was a snarled knot of feelings and motivations. Not only did she have resonance with him--and it was growing stronger--but she couldn’t tell anybody he existed. He was Uldren Sov come to life again, with no memory of gunning down Cayde-6, Vanguard of the Hunters. He didn’t know he’d been Taken and filled with Darkness. Worse, Silvan couldn’t find it in herself to dislike him. Aside from his annoying crush, he’d been extremely kind to her, even inventing a cure for an unknown poison on the fly. And his fighting skills--well, remembering seeing him fight left her a little winded, her heart pounding. He didn’t know that he was the Awoken Prince, but his body did. Whatever else one might say about Uldren Sov, his fighting skills had been legendary. He’d run a spy network called the Crows …

Three days into her forced vacation, Silvan unwrapped her bandage and inspected the wounds. Both of them were closed and scabbed over. The one on the back of her hand was nearly healed, a pink scar showing through the scab against her blue skin. In time, the scar would fade and take on the same color as the rest of her hand. Her palm was still stiff and sore, but she could use her fingers again. A few more days and she’d be back to normal.

Then what?

She’d likely be assigned somewhere else and wouldn’t see Crow again for months. And as stupid as it was, this was unbearable. She had to see him again. Feel that resonance once more. Her feelings were growing so muddled about this. Maybe it would be better to simply come clean, tell him the truth, explain what was happening. Then they could decide together to never see each other again.

She didn’t let herself consider the other option. She was not going to marry Uldren Sov just because her stupid brain shared a wavelength with him.

So, that afternoon, she thoughtfully packed a box with a number of food items that wouldn’t easily spoil, and flew out to the European Dead Zone.

Bramble sent out a ping to Glint, who replied with his position. Silvan flew in and landed in an old parking lot in Trostland, one that wasn’t entirely grown over with trees.

Crow was waiting for her in the shade of a dilapidated building, his brown cloak and black scale armor blending with his surroundings. He wore no helmet, only his hood. For some reason, he still wore his red pants, even though they were quite faded and dirty by now.

As soon as Silvan stepped off her ship’s gangplank, carrying the box, she felt the resonance. Crow was glad to see her. His happiness enveloped her in a wave of warmth and fizzy excitement, shades of red and gold, with a tinge of blue caution and a taste of honey. She froze for a second. How was the resonance this strong when they’d been apart for days? Had it developed on its own somehow? Once begun, did their brains go on developing it individually? She was doomed, that was all. Utterly, completely doomed.

But she couldn’t feel doomed when surrounded by his happiness. She walked up, a smile spreading across her face by accident. “Don’t you think your red pants might give you away during a hunt?”

She had not meant to say that. By the Traveler, why had she said that, of all the things she could have said?

Crow looked down and blinked, then he laughed. “You know, I never thought about that. I resurrected wearing them, and … I don’t have any other pants.”

“I did not mean to start this conversation this way,” Silvan said, heat rushing to her face. “Here, this is for you.” She handed him the box. Shield against him, shield hard and deep, think of concrete walls and impenetrable stone. He must not pick up anything from her, he must not know …

Crow opened the box and peered inside. “Is this … this is all food?”

“I thought you might get hungry out here,” Silvan said. “I only got containers that have lids you can open. And see this thing here in the paper? This is cheese. It’s kind of expensive, but once you try it, you’ll see why. It’ll keep you on your feet. And this, at the bottom, is an iron skillet. I already seasoned it for you. You can cook anything in it over a fire.”

She looked up to find Crow staring at her. His golden eyes were slightly misty. Despite her mental shielding, his feelings leaked through around the edges--strong feelings of gratitude and wistfulness, and affection. A tidal wave of affection. He wanted to hug her so badly.

Silvan tried to block it out, but it was like trying to hold back an avalanche with a shovel. All she could do was keep her own feelings from bleeding through, where he would notice them. She tried to fend him off. “Do you like it?”

“Thank you,” Crow said, his voice slightly choked. “Well--well come on, I’ll show you where I’ve been living.” As they set out toward the lake, he added, “It’s not much. Just a room where I’ve been staying. Inside the dam.”

Silvan gazed up at the dam’s towering wall and its buttressed shape where it flared out into the lake at its foot. “What’s it like in there?”

“Rusty,” Crow said with a quick grin. “Cold. Damp. But my room is pretty high up and fairly dry.”

Glint appeared beside him, bouncing merrily in midair. “It’s his Crow’s Nest.”

“It absolutely is not,” Crow replied.

Silvan laughed. Her defenses were slipping. Doomed, that’s what she was. He’d figure her out any minute.

He led her up into the ruins of a house that had collapsed sideways and created a rickety bridge over onto the dam. They entered a doorway with the remains of a door rotting from the hinges, and descended into the darkness and silence of the old hydroelectric factory inside. It smelled of mold and damp, and the walkways groaned under their weight. Rats skittered away as they walked along. Glint flew a few feet above them, lighting the way with his headlight. Bramble came out and added his own light.

“This place is terrible,” Silvan laughed.

“I know, right?” Crow replied. “Nobody else is dumb enough to live in here. Just me. My castle in the ruins.”

“If this is a castle, does that make you the prince?” Silvan said. Then she caught herself in a wave of terror. She couldn’t say things like that. Bramble and Glint both looked at her in alarm.

But Crow missed the significance. “I’m the king of it all! Welcome to my kingdom of ruins and rust.”

“At least there’s a nice lake attached,” Silvan said.

“There is,” Crow said. “One of these days I’m going to try jumping off the dam and diving into the lake.”

“You’d die on impact,” Silvan pointed out.

His grin was infectious. “That’s why I haven’t tried it.”

She laughed, and he gave her a quick look. There it was, for an instant--a questioning flash that vanished as soon as she felt it. She couldn’t keep herself from leaking through the resonance. It was too strong for her. He felt her, too.

They kept talking and laughing all the way through the dam and up to Crow’s little nest. It had once been a storage room of some kind. He’d laid boards across the floor to cover the dilapidated metal mesh that had once been there. A battered sleeping bag on a row of crates served as a bed, and other crates scattered around held various odd trinkets--a bowl, a white sheet, a pile of tools, a Hive sword leaning against the wall.

Crow pointed out each item and talked about it, his happiness overflowing. Silvan listened, not saying much, trying in vain to keep her mind closed off. Sweat began to collect along her hairline and trickle down her face, despite the chilly atmosphere inside the dam. She sat on a crate and let Crow’s resonance wash over her. This couldn’t continue. She would break in two any minute. She’d have to run for it.

Then Crow was sitting on a crate beside her, inspecting her hand. “May I?” he asked.

Silvan wordlessly held out her hand and watched him take it. He peeled off the small bandage she still wore, his hands gentle and deft. His nails were clean and trimmed better, although still broken in places. He was so suffocatingly close. She closed her eyes and resisted.

“Much better,” he said in satisfaction. “I was worried about this cut on your palm. It was deeper than the other, and the infection had spread so much further. You know, I invented that salve on a hunch? I had no idea if it would work. I’m glad it did, though.” He looked up and saw her face. His expression instantly turned serious. “What’s wrong?”

The aura of happiness cycled colors to yellow alarm and concern. The same color as his eyes. Silvan felt a tear run down her face. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t … hold it back anymore.” She slumped forward and put her face in her hands. At the same time, she let her last defenses go. They vanished like frost in the sun.

Her whole mind engulfed Crow like a tidal wave of her own. He got to experience her terror, her sadness, her reluctance and longing, her confusion and dread, her endless anguish. And beneath it all, the attraction and hope she didn’t want.

He rocked backward with a gasp, touching his head. “What is this? What’s happening?”

“She’s attacking you with her mind,” Glint said angrily. “Why are you doing this, Guardian? Bramble, make her stop!”

“She can’t,” said Bramble, watching Silvan closely. “He broke down her resistance.”

Crow leaped to his feet and backed away. “What do you mean? Ow, please stop!”

“It’s telepathic resonance,” Silvan said through the tears that were pouring down her face. She tried in vain to halt it, but the power was free now and would not be halted. “Glint, I’m sorry. Crow, I’m sorry. This is bad.”

“Bad, yes,” Crow said, retreating to the doorway. He winced, then ran off, his footsteps clanking on the walkway outside.

As he retreated, the resonance diminished. Silvan drew a deep breath and lifted her head. Glint floated a few inches from her face, his blue eye angry.

“I’ve spent months and months repairing his psychic damage,” Glint snarled. “You undid everything in a few seconds. Why did you attack him like that? Don’t you understand what a powerful psychic you are?”

“I hurt him?” Silvan exclaimed. “Oh no, I’m so sorry!” She stood up, but hesitated. “I can’t go after him. I’ll hurt him more. Oh Traveler, why did this have to happen?” She turned to Glint. “Can you explain for me? I’ll go away. I never have to see him again after this.”

“You’d better explain,” Glint growled.

Silvan explained about telepathic resonance. As she worked her way through the details, Glint’s anger faded into wonder. He kept turning to Bramble. “Is she telling the truth? This actually happens?”

“It does,” Bramble said sadly. “I looked it up in the Tower archives.”

Silvan finished her story and collapsed on a crate again. “I tried to keep it bottled up. But he doesn’t control his own resonance at all because he doesn’t know about it. He kept hammering at me and I just … couldn’t stop it anymore. And now I’ve hurt him again. Light, psychic damage is so bad. I’ve had it before. The headaches and nightmares and everything. Will he be all right?”

Glint flew in a circle, agitated and confused. “Well then … I don’t know what to do. I have to tell him what happened. He’s scared now. He won’t want anything to do with you.” Suddenly he spun in place, staring in Crow’s approximate direction. “Wait. He’s not scared of you. Another Guardian’s found him. And he wasn’t wearing his helmet!” Glint zipped away, phased straight through the wall, and was gone.

Silvan dashed out of the room and sprinted back through the dam. “Bramble, where is he?”

“Out in Trostland somewhere,” Bramble replied, flying at her shoulder. “There’s two or three Guardians out there, I’m picking up their Ghosts’ tags. I think they’re ganging up on Crow.”

“This is my fault,” Silvan muttered. “Me and my stupid brain. I should have told him what was happening right away. He’ll be dead by the time I get there, I just know it.”

“A resurrection might cure the psychic damage,” Bramble said.

“It won’t,” Silvan replied breathlessly, bounding up a flight of stairs two at a time. “I’ve done it. Psychic damage has to heal on its own. Why can’t I run faster?” She drew on the Light to increase her speed, driving her muscles faster and faster. She emerged at the top of the dam and exploded into her lightning supercharge, arc wings opening on either side. She launched herself into the air and flew over the buildings, electricity crackling over her body.

She no longer needed Bramble’s guidance. The flashes and explosions of Light guided her into an old city square, now grass-grown and littered with rubble. Two Titans and a Hunter were beating Crow to death with hammers and knives, all of them blazing with Solar Light.

Silvan summoned her lightning sword and concentrated as she winged into position overhead. Jayesh’s book sprang to mind: how to combine Light types for an overpowered attack.

“Jayesh can do it,” Silvan muttered. “And so can I!” She drew on the might of the Traveler, channeling two kinds of Light through her body. Then she plunged from the sky, sword first, and drove it into the ground in the middle of the attackers. 

Arc energy exploded from the point of impact in great loops of lightning and plasma. The enemy Guardians went flying. Crow curled up, shielding his face. Silvan’s lightning walked over him and formed a dome, the apex being the handle of her sword. The ground beneath rippled with healing light. She had successfully combined healing with arc Light. 

The other Guardians climbed to their feet, gripping their weapons and staring. “Do you know who that is?” one of them called.

“Yes,” Silvan snarled, gripping the sword’s hilt. “And if you know what’s best for you, you’ll get lost.”

The Guardians exchanged a silent look and nodded. Then they raised their weapons and charged.

Silvan felt Crow’s pain as if it were her own, beating in her mind. Crushed ribs, broken pelvis, internal injuries, concussion, cracked vertebrae. Bleeding everywhere. But he opened his eyes and looked up at her, with her lightning wings flaring above her shoulders, and admiration trickled through the pain.

Her own concern, and guilt, and fury flowed to him, unchecked, and resonated back to her with a sense of his wonder, and his untrained attempts to block her out a little. 

All this combined to kick Silvan into a white rage that surpassed anything Xivu Arath could force on her. She faced the oncoming Guardians and screamed. But the scream was also inside her mind.

A blast of psychic force caught all three Guardians and stunned them. They stumbled mid-stride and fell, holding their heads. Silvan ripped her energy sword out of the ground and ran forward. She ran one Titan through, and stabbed another in the leg. But the Hunter flipped to his feet and ran for his life. Silvan chased him a few steps, then returned to the others. She killed them both with quick stabs of her sword. As their Ghosts appeared, she snarled, “Transmat them far away from here before you resurrect them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” both Ghosts stammered. They and their Guardians vanished.

Only then did Silvan let her Light dissipate. The lightning shrank and vanished, leaving burned streaks across the ground. Her sword disappeared. The strength drained from her limbs. She staggered back to Crow and collapsed beside him.

Glint was already at work, pulsing healing Light into his partner. Crow rolled onto his back and lay with his eyes closed, letting his Ghost heal him bit by bit. The white stripe in his hair had swirled across his face.

"I'm sorry," Silvan said. She combed the stripe back into place on his forehead. "I hurt you and drove you away, and … I'm sorry."

Crow opened his eyes and looked up at her. "Why did you do that?" he whispered.

Silvan was confused. The words were accusing, but his mind was full of admiration and wonder. "The--the psychic thing? I couldn't hold it in anymore--"

"No, the angel explosion thing," Crow said. "You were magnificent. Even that scream you did."

Silvan touched his mind and found it raw and bleeding inside, as if claws had torn him. These were old wounds reopened, the careless cruelty of an Ahamkara. She pressed her cheek against his forehead. "I'm so sorry. I have to go away now so you can heal. Glint said I undid all your healing in a second and now you have psychic damage again." She pressed her lips to his forehead in a despairing caress, then scrambled to her feet, swaying. Her only goal was to reach her ship, to fly home and leave him alone. Her mind was tearing his mind apart, and she couldn't do that to him.

She'd staggered to the road leading out of the square when Crow caught up with her. "Hey," he called, limping after her, his Ghost still healing him. "Hey. Don't go. Stop." 

Silvan would have kept walking, but he caught her and wrapped his arms around her from behind. "Silvan," he whispered. "Please. Stay."

The resonance was too strong with him so close. Silvan felt every detail of his regard, his affection, and a surge of tenderness that utterly blanketed her own resonance. Her own mind fell quiet and passive. She closed her eyes and stood there, feeling his arms around her, smelling his unwashed clothes and feeling the sense of saddened loneliness that hung about him.

"Glint," Crow said. "Explain what you were just saying. About the telepathic thing."

Glint repeated back what Silvan had explained to him. As he talked, Crow tugged Silvan down to sit on the ground, in his lap, with his arms still around her. His own psychic power held Silvan's at bay, keeping her mind quiet. She knew she could push him away if she tried--the blanket was thin as gossamer--but she was not hurting him as long as it was there. So she sat and listened as Glint spoke the words that would change everything.

"Let me see if I understand this," Crow said. "All Awoken have psychic powers, but you and I have the same frequency. You call it resonance. Is that how you fought alongside me in the Hellmouth?"

Silvan nodded.

"You can read my mind?" Crow said, wonderingly.

Silvan shook her head. "It's not intentional. I could read you in more detail if I tried. But this … this resonance echoes us back and forth, sometimes. I feel your emotions. When we were in combat, I'd have flashes of what you were seeing."

Crow was silent, thinking. The resonance diminished as his focus turned inward. It was a relief, really. Silvan thought about trying to leave again, but it was no use. They'd have to work things out here, now, sitting in the weeds in the ruins of a town.

"Well," he said, smiling and resting his chin on her shoulder. "Want to get married?"

"No!" Silvan exclaimed. "I don't even _know_ you, Crow! You don't know me! And we'd have to go to the City to do it, and do you know what they'd do to you? Just … no. It's not going to work."

She felt him sigh and withdraw his psychic resonance, drawing it in bit by bit until he had entirely shielded himself from her. But he didn't let her go. His arms remained securely wrapped around her. He leaned forward and pressed his cheek against hers.

"If I let you go," he whispered, "please don't forget me."

A lump formed in her throat. "I won't," she whispered.

"Will you come back to the Reef?" he whispered. "Help me hunt Wrathborn? We work together so well."

"I will," she whispered. "But I might be assigned somewhere else, first."

He nodded, his stubbly cheek scraping hers a little. "I won't … work against you with my mind. You only hurt me because I was overwhelming you and I didn't know it. Can you forgive me?"

"Only if you forgive me," Silvan said, her voice breaking.

"Done," he said, smiling. He unwound his arms from around her at last and helped her stand. He rose to his feet, himself, wincing as his newly-healed bones popped. "Bramble, give this woman a sparrow and see that she reaches home safely."

"Yes sir," said Bramble, appearing in a flash of light. He transmatted Silvan's sparrow nearby, and Crow helped her aboard.

"Goodbye," he said, gazing at her wistfully. Some of his feelings touched hers, even more lonely than he had been before.

"Goodbye," Silvan said, meeting those golden eyes with her silver ones. "Keep your helmet on."

His smile was sheepish. "I will."

Silvan squeezed the throttle and drove away, leaving Crow gazing after her. She left behind all sense of him within a few minutes, but she'd never forget how his arms felt encircling her.

"You're an idiot to leave him behind," said a corner of her mind, where she was most honest.

But she didn't listen to it. Within an hour she was flying back to the Last City. She would mope around the Tower until her hand was declared well and her next assignment came in. And if she never saw Crow again …

No. She couldn't think that way. She had to see him again. Soon.

* * *

End of part 2


	5. Part 3: The Dreaming City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crow, Silvan, and Osiris explore the Dreaming City to destroy the cryptoliths there. But the discovery of mysterious glowing feathers leads them in search of the Traveler's call, and a weapon called Hawkmoon.

"That's the last of it," Crow said, emptying oil over the side of the cryptolith. Clear oil trickled down the ridges in the hideous monument, running between the layers of chitin. Standing so near it, he felt the urge to draw nearer, to touch, to listen. Voices seemed to be singing within … singing in praise of eternal war.

Crow lit a match on the heel of his boot and flicked it onto the cryptolith.

The structure whooshed into flame, blue fire racing into every chink and crevice. Crow and Madrid walked to a safe distance, Crow carrying the empty oil can. The bodies of dead Eliksni were piled at the cryptolith's base, late worshipers who had been snared irretrievably by Xivu Arath's celebration of violence and rage.

The two Awoken men stood and watched the flames lick higher and higher, taking on red and green tints as pockets of chemicals ignited. The wind blew the smoke and flame nearly horizontal in a long plume across the Tangled Shore. They'd burned four other cryptoliths that day, and the violent winds that churned at sunset were beginning to rise. Soon it would be time to seek shelter for the night. But they had to wait for the fire to reach the cryptolith's core, which usually took a while.

"My scouts say the Shore is clean," Crow said. "But the cryptoliths are appearing in the Dreaming City."

"No," said Madrid.

Crow looked up at the hunter. Madrid was almost seven feet tall, cloaked and hooded against the wind, as Crow was. Only the glow of his eyes showed within the shadows of his hood. He met Crow's gaze. "I was imprisoned there for two years. I'm never going back."

Crow had forgotten about this particular fact. He'd met Madrid there after his resurrection, and had seen the prisoner's band on his arm. But Madrid would never tell him what crime he had committed to receive such an extreme punishment.

"I could try to bring in Spider's guys," Crow said doubtfully. "But without Light, they couldn't escape the time loop. Do you think I could recruit some of the Awoken Corsairs?"

"No," Madrid barked. "Word would get back to Petra Venj."

Crow had never met Petra, but he understood that she was the Queen's Wrath and someone to avoid. In fact, Madrid had informed him that he needed to avoid the Queen's notice altogether. From the things his friends had told him, he agreed.

The burning cryptolith began to spin, trying to burrow into the ground to escape the flame. The two men watched it warily.

"I can't fight Wrathborn without backup," Crow said. "The only other friends I have are busy. Mithrax. Siegfried. Timothy. Jayesh." He didn't mention Silvan. The thought of her was an emptiness in his soul.

"I'll find someone," Madrid said. "Look out." He raised a hand, creating a grenade out of Light.

The cryptolith halted and unwound its coiled chitin segments, the membranes gone loose and soft in the heat. A swarm of insect-things exploded out of it and scurried across the ground in every direction.

Madrid threw his grenade. It exploded into smaller projectiles, which also exploded. Crow imitated him. Madrid had been teaching him how to create Light grenades. His first one didn't spread quite so spectacularly, but his second one was better.

They threw grenades into the insects until all were motionless. Then they circled the perimeter, stamping on any that had only been injured or stunned. Neither of them knew what kind of bugs they were, but they emerged from each cryptolith during a burn and were probably what had built it. Crow had retrieved a few dead ones and brought them to Spider. The crime lord, in turn, had sold them to the Reef's Techeuns at an extravagant price. Apparently the Awoken were highly interested in the science behind Xivu Arath's invasion of their home.

Madrid and Crow returned to where they'd left their sparrows in the shelter of a rock outcropping. They flew out into the wind, fighting their sparrows through each gust. Neither of them spoke until they plunged down a steep path that wound into the asteroid, emerging in the cove of Thieves' Landing. The wind was broken here, swirling through the cove in cold eddies. Later on, as the continent revolved, the winds would pick up here, too.

Madrid and Crow ran their sparrows into a garage, where several Eliksni worked on their own vehicles. The aliens greeted them and promised to look after their sparrows. Then the two hunters crossed the little town to Spider's lair.

Madrid politely hung back as Crow entered Spider's room to report in. "Five cryptoliths destroyed, Baron. That was the last of them."

"Good," said Spider. "I want none of that Hive filth on my Shore. But I'm hearing rumors of cryptoliths in the Dreaming City." Spider eyed Crow expectantly.

"Yes, Baron," Crow said. "I'll deal with them first thing in the morning."

"Good," Spider said. "Dismissed. I want to speak to your Guardian friend."

Crow went down the passage to his workroom and sat down with a muffled groan. It felt good to be off his feet at last. He sat there and listened to Spider's voice growling and Madrid's concise replies. 

Glint appeared and opened his shell, pulsing healing Light into his partner. Crow closed his eyes and let the Light wash away the ache in his feet, the bruises and weariness. But hunger gnawed his belly, and no amount of healing could fix that. He wistfully thought of the supplies that Silvan had given him back on Earth, especially the cheese. Everything had been filling and delicious. But it vanished all too quickly. Now he was back to trading for supplies from the Eliksni, and trying to survive on the rations Spider assigned him--bread and meat of dubious origin, mostly. It kept him on his feet, but it didn't feel particularly nourishing.

Madrid entered the room and sat on the workbench, wrapping his cloak around himself. "He said I could take anything in his lair in payment if I help you purge the cryptoliths."

Crow nodded. "He must be desperate. With the Xivu Arath infection starting here and then spreading, it makes him look bad. If it reaches the Awoken cities, the Queen would come calling."

"That would be bad," Madrid said. "Very bad."

Crow stood and took a box down from a shelf. Inside were a few greasy food containers. He silently offered some to Madrid, who refused. Crow sat and ate, trying not to think about what he was eating. It was so salty, it didn't have much other flavor, anyway.

Madrid rose to his feet. "I need to make a call. Be right back."

Crow kept on with his dinner, which was nearly as unpleasant as destroying cryptoliths. He glanced at Glint and started to speak to him inside his head. But pain lanced through his skull like a lightning flash. Psychic damage. Right.

"Glint," Crow said aloud, "do we have any more of that stuff to help me sleep?"

"No," the Ghost said sadly. "You used the last of it last night." He hesitated, then said, "Are the dreams so bad?"

Crow smiled a little. "They're not horrible, but … they're constant. And they're getting worse. Last night the sky turned black, and … it makes me not want to sleep at all."

Glint didn't say anything, but he traced the side of Crow's head with a healing beam. Some of the lingering headache faded.

Madrid returned and sat on the workbench again. "Silvan's on her way. She'll arrive tomorrow after dawn."

Crow's entire being brightened. "Silvan? She agreed to come?"

"Yes," Madrid said, watching him. "She told me about …" He tapped his head, then gestured at Crow.

Crow nodded. "I don't know what to do about it. Neither does she. Right now, all we do is hurt each other." A grin sneaked across his face. "I asked if she wanted to marry me, and she said no."

Madrid grinned too, slowly. "Give it time. You don't even know each other. Could you work on being friends?"

"We don't have much choice," Crow said, sealing the lid back on the food container. He reached for a water canteen and drank half of it. "Just being anywhere near each other, our brains react like magnetic poles. I wish I could talk to a Techeun about it, but … they don't like Lightbearers."

"The tech witches never did," Madrid replied. "I'm turning in for the night. Get some rest." He slapped Crow's shoulder and walked out, pulling his cloak around himself.

Crow crawled into the hole in the wall that served as his bunk. He tried to sleep, but dreams plagued him, waking him up every few hours.

He was tired and haggard the next morning, when Silvan arrived.

He knew she was near before he ever laid eyes on her. That resonance began, the sense of his thoughts echoing, becoming fuller and richer. With it came her thoughts, not yet shielded, nervous, anxious, and ashamed of herself. She was berating herself as she approached his workroom, even. But beneath it ran that undercurrent of sweetness that he was rapidly growing to love.

The resonance diminished as she composed herself and shielded her mind. Then she stepped into his workroom. "Good morning, Crow."

"Good morning, Silvan." Her warlock robe was spotless, its silver hem gleaming where it traveled from her left shoulder to her right hip, and flowed below her knees from there. The rest of the fabric was an incongruous magenta. Against the dingy metal pipes and dirty stone floor, she was as alien as a Venusian dewflower.

Crow clumsily tried to close his mind to minimize his own resonance, but he wasn't certain he was doing it right. To disguise his awkwardness, he picked up his shotgun, broke the barrel, and peered through, pretending to check it for cleaning purposes. "It's been a few weeks. How've you been?"

She held up her right hand, displaying a scar across the palm. "I've been declared fully healed and ready for active duty. I had to talk my way around Ikora to be assigned out here again. She's my boss. But when I told her that one of my teammates had asked for help with the spread in the Dreaming City, she agreed. She knows all about Madrid. I didn't tell her about you, though. I mean, I did, but not your name or anything."

Her chatter washed over him, so different from the way he and Madrid talked. He found himself smiling, taking in her refreshing femininity. He hadn't seen her in two weeks, and it felt like two months.

Silvan winced. "You're doing it again."

"Oh. Sorry." Crow poked around inside his head, not sure what he was doing. "I might need a hint on how to … not psychic you."

She sighed and looked at the pipes overhead. "Have you ever done exercises with controlled breathing? When you're sniping, for instance?"

"Short breath in, long breath out?" Crow said. "Madrid's been teaching me. And Osiris."

"It's like that," said Silvan. "Inside my mind, I focus on something with a pattern, like prime numbers. You can do rhymes or songs or anything. Just focus in on a point and it dampens down the resonance."

Crow looked at the shotgun in his hands and began listing the parts to himself. Loading port, chamber, forearm, barrel …

"That's better," Silvan said with a sigh. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it."

"Uh, all right," Crow muttered. He couldn't really focus on his gun with her standing right there. He tried to focus on something else--like work. He picked up the lure from the workbench and slung it over one shoulder. "Ready to hunt?"

Silvan jerked a thumb at the machine gun strapped to her back. "Omar is ready to kill Hive."

Crow picked up the metal box of mutagens, lately restored to him by Madrid, and accompanied Silvan out of Spider's lair. Spider watched them go, but said nothing. His eyes followed Silvan, in particular.

As they neared their docked ships, Silvan said, "Does Spider leer at every Guardian like that? Or am I special?"

"He dislikes me being with you," Crow said in a low voice. "He thinks you'll seduce me away."

"Not that it would do any good," Silvan said despairingly. "Not with an explosive strapped to Glint. It's all right to go to the Dreaming City, right? He won't flip the switch out of spite?"

The thought of this made Crow anxious and sick. "No, he gave me this assignment. It's safe."

They said nothing more until they reached their ships. Then Silvan said, "For the record … I'd never try to seduce you."

"Oh?" Crow replied, giving her a sideways look.

"No." Silvan held her helmet in both hands, fingering the straps. The wind teased a wisp of red hair out of her braids, and it blew against her cheek. "I respect you too much. If that makes sense."

"It does," Crow replied, touched. "Thanks."

Neither of them said anything else as they boarded their ships and took off. But Crow held her words in his heart, turning them over and pondering them. Did this mean that he could trust her? Was it possible to trust a woman? The stories the Eliksni told of humans's monstrous unfaithfulness to each other had convinced him that all females were untrustworthy. Well, only time would tell. If Silvan tried to lie to him, he'd sense it from her resonance at once.

He took point on their way to the Dreaming City. Silvan took up a position off his port wing. Her ship was bigger than his borrowed jumpship. She flew a medium-sized hauler that had been modified to accept a jump drive. It was an ugly, boxy thing, but it was probably roomy inside. Odd thing for a girl to fly, but he didn't know much about girls.

The Dreaming City lay deep within the Reef. Once it had been the asteroid Vesta, but it had been terraformed with a combination of Awoken science and Ahamkara wishes. Atmosphere spread out from it in rippling blue waves, gathering in a haze around its equator. Mountains protruded out into space, along with a single, immense tower, designed to look like the nose of a spaceship.

As they flew in, a wave of distortion passed through their ships. To Crow, it felt like cold water had been poured down his back. He shivered. They had entered the time loop that had held the Dreaming City imprisoned for more than two years. The whole city lived the same three weeks over and over. By the end of the third week, Taken energy had invaded and covered every structure in tarry black goo. Crow had seen all three weeks several times. He was pleased to see that today was some time during the first week, because the buildings were still white and clean, the air clear, the trees still green.

They landed their ships in the only flat area in the Dreaming City, a rocky lakebed called the Divalian Mists. It looked like it was full of water, but it was only mist that flowed over the stones.

As Crow emerged from his ship, Silvan stepped out of hers, and her resonance was friendly and welcoming. If he was around her enough, he probably wouldn't even notice it anymore. But as he walked toward her, he felt her sudden dismay as she tried to shield herself from him. Light blast him, he was bad at being psychic. He focused on the rocks underfoot, counting them, until he could barely sense her at all.

He turned his attention away from Silvan, outward, to the Dreaming City. "Have you been here before?" he asked.

"Yes, many times," Silvan said, gazing across the jagged mountains to the Tower in the distance. "I was bitten by Hive worms here and nearly died from their venom."

Crow shook his head. "You and nearly dying from the Hive. Be more careful."

"For the record, cryptoliths are _new_ ," Silvan said. "I'll bet lots of people had bad things happen to them."

"The Eliksni did," Crow said.

Silvan didn't have much to say after that. Crow retrieved the lure from his cargo compartment. Then they made their way across the lake bed to higher ground, where a grove of graceful, windblown trees sheltered singing birds. Crow stopped to listen. The melody reminded him of something he'd forgotten. More than that, it awakened a deeper sense, as if the Dreaming City was bigger and deeper and higher than his eyes could see.

"Reality is thin here," he remarked to Silvan. "The City lies between two worlds, dreaming of the other."

"I feel it, too," Silvan murmured. She touched a tree trunk with her fingertips. "This is a metaphor."

Crow touched a branch. As he did, an impression flashed through his mind: poison spears thrust deep into the Dreaming City's flesh and bone. He suddenly knew the location of every cryptolith.

"There's three cryptoliths," he said. "We'll deal with them one at a time."

Silvan gave him a curious look. But someone said behind them, "Good. You may be a Guardian, but you are still Awoken."

They turned to see Osiris climbing the hill toward them, wearing his regal warlock robes with the feathers. He wore his bird helmet, but had left off his cloth mask, revealing himself as an old man with heavy shadows under his eyes. Losing his Ghost had hit him hard. But he smiled and extended a hand, first to Silvan, then to Crow.

"Come to help us hunt?" Crow asked.

Osiris nodded. "I was already here, studying the reaction of the time loop to this new intrusion. It has released ripple effects into the Ascendant Realm. The powers that be are in conflict. Much is happening here that does not meet the eye. Two thrones stand empty."

"Savathun is gone?" Crow said. "She's the Hive god responsible for the curse on the City."

"Yes," Osiris said. "The Black Fleet seeks to punish her. She has gone into hiding. Xivu Arath reigns unchecked in her sister's stead. Come, we must cut her off from this place. I've had a word with the Corsairs. They are keeping clear of the cryptoliths." He fastened his mask in place. "Eyes up, Guardians."

Crow set off with a thrill. Osiris called him a Guardian. Could he actually be one, someday? Would he ever be free of Spider?

They walked in single file, Crow taking the lead, shotgun in one hand, lure in the other. Scorn frequented this area--zombie Eliksni with no sense of pain or self-preservation. But they feared him. Probably Spider's mark on his cloak.

As his keen eyes swept the landscape for movement, he spotted a small glowing object among the rocks a short distance uphill. He signaled a halt and climbed the hill toward it. It sparkled in the sunlight, glowing a soft white. It made a faint chiming noise in his head, soothing to the sore places in his mind. He picked it up.

It was a feather, warm and soft to the touch. But it was made of energy, somehow. He carried it back to his companions, hearing its chime in his head like balm, like medicine, like health and healing.

"It looks like a feather," Crow said, holding it out. "What is it, really?"

Osiris took it and turned it over slowly. He passed it to Silvan, who also examined it. She had been oddly quiet since Osiris had arrived. Crow glanced at her, feeling her mind. She was tightly shielded and drawn into herself. Crow didn't catch on until she passed the feather back to him, and her hand shook a little. She was terrified of Osiris. He tried to reassure her with his mind, trying to let her feel his confidence in this man and his wisdom. But he wasn't sure if he got through to her or not. This resonance thing wasn't a reliable way to communicate.

Glint appeared and scanned the feather. "It's pure paracausal energy. It's here … and it isn't. It must be from the Traveler. But why?"

"Why, indeed," said Osiris thoughtfully. "Don't lose it. I'd like to study it, later."

Crow tucked the feather into a spare ammo pouch on his belt. They walked on, but the chime of it stayed with him, refreshing him. The power of the Traveler, itself, was in his pocket. It was too bad that Jayesh Khatri wasn't around to answer questions. Crow did have his book, though. He'd read part of it already. He'd have to finish it and see if anything like this was mentioned.

They rounded a huge boulder and came upon the cryptolith down in a hollow between two hills. Its foul roots had spread outward, breaking the ground in ugly fissures. The spiral structure of it seemed to pierce the time loop, itself, each ring protruding through a different layer of time.

"I feel I'm beginning to learn the ways of this place," Crow remarked. He hesitated and lifted the lure from his shoulder. Then he checked the position of the sun. "We should wait about ten minutes."

Osiris scrutinized him but didn't question. "I'll cover you," he said, and climbed the hill toward a huge gnarled tree.

"Do you fear him?" Crow asked in a low voice.

Silvan's gaze followed Osiris. "I've heard people whisper about him all my life. The things he did with time, and with Vex tech, were legend. I've read his books, even though they're kept locked up. I had to get all kinds of clearance from the Cryptarchs. And here he is! He may be mortal now, but he has such a commanding presence. Don't you think?" 

"He is imposing," Crow agreed. "But I don't think he's as frightening as you think he is." He patted her shoulder. "Try to relax."

She flinched at his touch and dipped her shoulder out from under his hand. "I'll try," she said, pretending nothing had happened.

Crow played along, trying to figure out her unspoken game. Her mental shielding had chinks that he could find and peer through. The more they interacted, the easier it was to learn the shape of the armor she wove about herself. She was downright afraid of Osiris. It rippled off her in yellow and orange waves of tension, tasting of bitter sweat and salt. Beneath that, where she tried to hide it, was that same confusion and self-deprecation he had sensed from her earlier. What was that about?

Before he could puzzle her out, a cloud passed in front of the sun. The landscape turned gray and a chilly breeze sprang up.

"Now," Crow murmured. He lifted the lure and drove it into the base of the cryptolith with all his strength.


	6. Good hunting

As the whole structure began to turn, drilling its way out of the ground, a swarm of Hive thralls clawed out of the ground with it. The sight of their squirming bodies and the stench they brought with them sent a shudder of revulsion through Crow. He set upon them with his shotgun, retreating to higher ground a step at a time. One thrall sprang at his face and was cut down by a shot from Osiris. Another grabbed the barrel of his shotgun and tried to wrench it from his grasp, only to die to a blast from Silvan's machine gun.

As the last thrall died, the cryptolith twisted open, releasing a hulking, long-armed monster known as a Hive ogre. It had a single huge compound eye that could kill with a long stare. Crow had once killed one with his eyes closed. The ogre roared and bounded toward him, beating the ground with its muscular forearms. Usually they were slow, shambling beasts, content to use their deadly stare to destroy enemies. This one was unusually aggressive, obviously Wrathborn.

Crow leaped away from it, drawing on his Light to spring fifteen feet in the air. Its huge fist slammed down on the spot where he'd just been. The ogre roared and focused its death gaze after him, a withering necrotic power that rotted any surface to dust in seconds. But before it could concentrate, Silvan and Osiris poured hot lead into its huge eye.

Crow landed and spun, aiming his shotgun. He blasted the ogre with round after round.

The ogre raised both arms to protect its eye. Bellowing like an angry bull, it bounded toward Crow and landed a bone cracking blow that sent him flying. Straight toward a very large rock. Lovely.

He never felt the impact. Instead, he slipped straight into a dream. He was flying free this time, on powerful wings, through a blue sky. Earth. Definitely Earth. Trees and mountains spread blue below him. A glory of clouds parted in the distance, revealing a column of light. He winged toward it with joy in his heart. It was calling him.

Then he looked up and the dream became a nightmare. The blue sky was black, black as deepest void. It engulfed the clouds, the mountains, and last of all, that column of light. Black night swallowed all.

Crow awoke as Glint resurrected him. A terrible pain was just fading from his head from where he'd shattered his skull on a rock. Silvan knelt beside him, pale and shaken.

Crow sat up, the dream vivid in his mind. "Thanks, Glint. That was a bad one."

"No problem, friend," Glint replied, closing his shell. "I estimate the ogre threw you forty feet."

"A new record," Crow said wryly. Silvan's concern washed over him, embarrassing and flattering at the same time. "I'm fine, really," he said to her.

"I don't like seeing my friends die," she said, helping him up, although he didn't need it. "The ogre ran off. I shot the cryptolith."

"Good," Crow replied. He retrieved his shotgun and reloaded it, turning his back on the bloody patch where he had died. Lightbearers died all the time. But he didn't think he'd ever get used to it.

Osiris walked up, jamming a fresh magazine into his pulse rifle. "The Wrathborn shouldn't be hard to track. It bled essence and blood in equal measures. As long as it does not retreat into the Ascendant Realm, we can catch it. But drawing out the High Celebrant will be difficult. I may need to see how you configure that lure of yours."

Crow yanked the lure out of the cryptolith and slung it over his shoulder. "Be my guest. Let's hunt before the trail fades."

The Wrathborn had left a wide, clear trail. The three of them followed it across the hillside, down a gully, along the side of a gorge filled with mist, and up a set of marble stairs toward a graceful building that soared into the sky like a cathedral. In the outer courtyard of this building, they found a second cryptolith. It had burrowed straight through a beautiful tile pavement, ruining the pattern and cracking irreplaceable tiles. It squatted there like an ugly toad, out of place and foul. The ogre crouched behind it, black blood dripping from its wounded eye.

"Got you," said Crow. He drew his sword, crept up behind the ogre, and drove his blade into the side of its head.

The monster's whole head exploded into green flames. It wailed as it fell, calling to the second cryptolith. This second one began to drill out in preparation for opening.

Crow, Silvan, and Osiris retreated to cover around the courtyard. In many places, the natural stone had been left to protrude through the earth, giving the area a natural beauty. It also made places to hide from monsters.

As Crow and Silvan waited, Crow said, "Silvan … if I tell you something … you won't think I'm crazy, will you?"

She glanced up at him, her lips curling in a smile. "Depends on what you tell me." Her mental armor weakened a little, some of that vulnerable sweetness bleeding through.

Crow drew a deep breath. "I keep having these dreams. I'm flying, and there's a light in the distance … but darkness comes and blots out the world. I keep thinking the Light is calling to me."

He was interrupted as a Wrathborn Hive Witch swirled out of the cryptolith, surrounded by a fiery shield that repelled their bullets. She screamed and drew energy into herself, glowing hot orange.

"Look out!" Osiris called.

Silvan and Crow ducked behind the rock as the witch released a shockwave of heat. It blasted outward, searing the grass and withering the ornamental trees. It had barely passed when Silvan swung out from cover and poured a wave of bullets into the witch. She spun back into hiding with a snarl. "It's no good. I can't break through her shield."

"Allow me." Crow stepped out and drew on his Light. Flames rippled down his arm and formed a gun in his hand made of red fire. The projectiles it fired passed straight through the witch's shield and shredded through her delicate body. She screeched horribly. Her shield flickered and vanished.

They made short work of her after that. Silvan shot out the cryptolith's eye. Then they walked back toward the center of the Dreaming City, headed for the Gardens of Esila, where Crow sensed another cryptolith.

As they walked, he told them about his dreams in greater detail. Osiris and Silvan listened with keen interest. Silvan didn't say anything with Osiris there. She had a way of melting into the background, her psychic power making her hard to notice. She didn't want Osiris to turn his attention on her. 

Osiris was fascinated by the potential meaning of Crow's dreams.

"You may be communing with the Traveler in some way," said the old warlock. "Many Guardians had a similar dream during the Red War, when it sent them to the Shard for Light. I would dismiss such a thing as the echo of an old call, but you also found that feather today. Taken together, I believe the Traveler is trying to communicate with you."

"Why me?" Crow said. He gestured at his ragged clothing. "I've never even seen the Traveler up close. I'm nobody. Just a random Lightbearer with a load of bad luck."

"The Traveler chose each of its Guardians," said Osiris. "It sent the Ghosts to find each of us. Now, it's trying to speak to you, personally. The Light always communicates in a form unique to that individual. Heed your dream."

"How?" Crow said. "What does it want me to do?"

"I'd suggest visiting the Shard of the Traveler in the EDZ," said Osiris. "See if further guidance appears. Take that feather with you."

"Right," said Crow.

Osiris turned to Silvan. "I know what you're doing, young lady, but it won't work on me. Why are you hiding?"

Silvan cringed and crossed her arms, hunching her shoulders, as if trying to protect herself. "You're Osiris," she said, her voice unsteady. "The one who walked the corridors of time and challenged the Axis Minds, themselves. You've contended with the Nine. And now you're _right here_ and what am I supposed to do with that?"

Osiris laughed, his eyes crinkling behind his mask. "My reputation has preceded me." He kindly patted her on the back. "Don't be frightened of an old man, Guardian. Silvan Nerisis, wasn't it? I'm primarily a scholar, although I do go in for more arcane lore. Anything you wish to know, just ask."

Silvan slowly straightened, looking into his face. "Anything? Sir, that's a dangerous offer. I'm a Gensym Scribe. My job is curiosity."

"A Scribe, eh?" Osiris said. "What's your field?"

"Planetary climatology and ecological systems," Silvan replied. "Basically, I study the way the Traveler terraformed the solar system in hopes that humanity can one day do it, ourselves."

"Right," Osiris said, nodding. "My area of expertise lies in the higher dimensions, but I've picked up an extra thing or two along the way. Don't fear me, Silvan Nerisis. I'm nothing to fear anymore." His voice trailed off in a note of grief.

Silvan ventured to touch his arm. "I just wanted to say … I'm so sorry. About your Ghost."

Osiris nodded. "It happens. Nothing for it but to press on."

They walked in silence for a while. Crow felt Silvan's grief on behalf of their companion, and tried to block her out. She didn't need to deal with him swamping her right now. Blast, this resonance was annoying. At first, he thought it might be sexy to share feelings with a girl. But the reality was much more grueling and tiring than he'd anticipated. She simply felt so _much_. No wonder women were complicated creatures. He could only handle feeling one thing at a time, and often he didn't want that much. It interfered with his thinking.

The hunt in the Gardens of Esila was unexpectedly difficult. The Gardens were a couple of acres of ponds, lawns, flower beds and patches of wildflowers around various rock outcroppings. It was a quiet, beautiful place. So naturally, the Hive tried to destroy it. The Wrathborn was a vicious Hive Knight, nearly the size of the High Celebrant, who went after them with his jagged bone sword. It took all three of them to end his rampage and break the cryptolith's power.

Afterward, they rode their sparrows back to their ships, Crow giving Osiris a lift on his. Crow's stomach was beginning to demand food, but he tried to ignore it. With nothing to look forward to but more salted meat and hard bread, eating was low on his list of enjoyable activities.

Still, he was reluctant to return to the Tangled Shore and Spider's demands so soon. He might stay behind for a while and watch the sun set. Enjoy the beauty of the Dreaming City before he had to remember that he was a glorified slave. He wouldn't starve to death in a few hours.

As they dismounted from their sparrows, Silvan said, "Osiris, where's your ship?"

"I didn't arrive by ship," Osiris said. "I am mortal now and cannot escape the time loop by conventional means. Fortunately, as one intrepid Guardian found, it is possible to escape through the Ascendant Realm. I'll catch up with you later." 

Osiris lifted a hand and a set of floating blocks appeared in midair. He spun them and rearranged them until they flashed white. A black hole peeled open in midair. Osiris stepped through, and the hole swirled shut behind him.

"Better him than me," Crow muttered.

"I hope he's all right," Silvan said. She summoned her Ghost and turned away, murmuring to him.

Crow deliberately walked away a few paces to give them some privacy. He disliked being overheard when he talked to Glint, so he gave her the same consideration. 

Glint appeared at his unspoken thought. He twirled his orchid shell thoughtfully. "I found you not too far from here," he said, turning to look at the sunbeams streaming between two mountain crags. "About this time of day, too. I was so happy. I'd looked for you for so many years."

Crow stroked the Ghost's shell. "You were the first thing I saw. I didn't know what was happening. I'm glad it was you who found me."

As they stood there together, gazing at the play of light through the mists, Silvan stepped up beside them with Bramble and cleared her throat. "Hi."

"Hi," Crow echoed, smiling.

She followed his gaze and drew a deep breath. "What a beautiful view."

They stood there together, watching the sunbeams turn to molten gold and the shadows change to amethyst. The tower in the distance was lit bright on one side and drowned in blue on the other. For a moment, Crow forgot about mental shielding or focus. He was simply at peace. Silvan's presence seemed to be part of the air he breathed, and she was at peace, too. Their mutual calm overlapped and soothed them together.

"When does Spider expect you back?" Silvan said, as if continuing a conversation. 

"Late tomorrow," Crow said. "I have to burn the cryptoliths, and it's an all-day project."

Her hesitation touched him, then she said, "Would you … want to have dinner with me?"

He tried to hide a smile. "You do know that the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach?"

"I _swear_ I don't mean anything by it," she said, closing her eyes. "Dang it, Crow. This isn't a date. I picked up supplies in Reefedge and I wanted to try cooking over a campfire. Um. With you. Since I've seen what Spider feeds you."

He looked at her to see her blushing magenta, nearly the same color as her robes. Her feelings said that this was indeed a date, no matter how hard she denied it.

"If you cook it, I'll eat it," he said, trying to soothe her embarrassment. "I'll build a campfire, if you like. Up on the hill, over there. It's too damp down here in the mist."

"All right," she agreed. "Let me collect my things." She almost ran up the gangplank into her ship.

Laughing, Crow climbed the hill and looked for a sheltered spot. Then he hunted for dead wood among the little twisted junipers. "What do you think of that girl, Glint?"

"She likes you very much," Glint said. "But I think she's afraid to like you so much. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the resonance."

"Is the resonance harmful?" Crow asked, twisting a dead branch off a tree. "It did give me more psychic damage."

"Yes," Glint said thoughtfully. He highlighted another branch with his spotlight. "This one is thoroughly desiccated. Anyway, I've noticed that this round of psychic damage is healing more rapidly than the original. Whenever Silvan is around, she has a calming effect on your mind. And that feather has helped, too. I've observed it gradually healing you all day."

Crow thought about this as he carried the branches to a nice spot in the hollow of a huge stone. He raked the ground smooth with the side of his boot, heaped the branches to one side, and rolled together a circle of stones. He pulled out a knife and shaved bark off a branch to create a little pile of kindling. Then he summoned a single Solar knife that shimmered with heat. He stuck it in the kindling. It smoked for a moment, then flickered into flame.

"So," Crow said, blowing on it, "she hurt me, but not too badly. And it's healing quickly. But … she wouldn't have hurt me at all if I hadn't flattened her first. Right?"

"Yes, that's what happened," Glint said.

Crow fed the growing fire. "So … is this resonance supposed to be a romantic thing? Or a friendship thing? I'm not sure how to handle this. Awoken get it, but why?"

"I'll … have to get back to you on that," Glint said. "I haven't been able to research it as thoroughly as I'd like. I'll speak to her Ghost, if you don't mind. Here they come."

Silvan carried a box up the hill crammed with packages and cooking implements. She looked up, saw Crow waiting for her beside the fire, and smiled as if he'd collected a piece of the sun, itself. Her unfiltered delight struck him like starlight and rainbows. She'd either forgotten to shield herself, or she thought she was too far away for him to feel anything. It made his head ache a little, but her happiness was so honest and simple, he didn't mind.

"What a lovely fire!" she exclaimed as she reached the hilltop. "I'll have time to put this together while it burns down. I've heard that only the best Hunters can build campfires so quickly. What do you think?"

She sat on a rock and began pulling packages out of her box. Crow sat nearby and watched. "Fire is a matter of survival. I'd be a poor Hunter if I didn't survive. Do you need any help?"

She waved him off. "No, no, let me do this. I've been hoping for an excuse for months."

Crow watched in pleasant anticipation as she seasoned steaks, potatoes, and green vegetables. She packed the vegetables in tinfoil and wiped off her hands. Then she opened several packages, poured them into a dish, and stirred them together. As she worked, she talked non-stop. Crow heard about her father and step-mother, and how they had been a fireteam for years, until her father told Silvan that it was time to grow up and form her own team. She talked about her first attempt at this, which involved freeing Madrid from his forced labor. Then she detailed fighting Nightmares on the Moon. Crow listened in silence, watching her prepare food with hungry attention. He tried not to adore her every move and word, but his crush on her was only strengthening the longer they spent time together. She was so damn _cute_ , chattering away about aliens and demons, with her hands messy with flour and seasonings. She absently scratched her nose and left a smudge. He waited to see if she would notice. She didn't.

He watched her move to the fire and cook the food, and again, he didn't have to say a word. Silvan chattered on about her trips to Jupiter's lesser moons and the papers she had written on them.

Under cover of her talk, Glint murmured, "I assure you, she's not as perfect as you think she is."

"Hush. I'm listening," Crow replied.

Silvan didn't run out of things to say until the food was cooked. By then, it was dark, the sky brilliant with the Milky Way and the million tiny crescent moons of the asteroid belt. Their Ghosts provided light as Silvan and Crow ate every last scrap. Beside the steak, potatoes, and vegetables, Silvan had managed to bake a tiny cake in the coals. She gave all of it to Crow. "I didn't know if it would turn out, but it did."

"So you practice your cooking on someone too hungry to refuse food?" Crow said with a wicked grin.

There went her blush again. "No, that's not what I meant! I was trying to make you something nice, but I didn't know if--I wouldn't give you bad food, if it had flopped. I just--"

"Shh," Crow said, touching her hand. "It's delicious."

Her gratified smile was as sweet as dessert had been.

Crow would have stayed with her beside the fire for hours, but something screamed in the distance, reminding them that the Dreaming City was not safe. So they agreed to take their ships to orbit for the night.

Crow reclined his seat and gazed out his cockpit window at Silvan's ship, again flying off his port wing. "Good night, lovely," he said aloud, closing his eyes.

"Should I relay that?" Glint asked.

"No," Crow said. "Please don't."

Glint made a sound like a chuckle and settled down to watch the instruments as his partner slept.


	7. Hawkmoon

"I'm falling for him, Bramble," Silvan admitted.

It was early the next morning. Silvan had spent the night in the bunk on her ship, and now was back in her cockpit, awaiting a ping from Crow's ship. She brushed out her red hair and pleated it with the ease of long habit.

Bramble floated beside her, watching. "I thought that was the opposite of what you wanted to do."

"It is," Silvan said. "I mean … he's Uldren Sov. But he's also a sweetheart and so lonely. Also, our resonance is becoming more bearable all the time. He's not beating at me so hard now, and I don't have to defend as much."

"Dinner last night was pleasant enough," Bramble observed. "He likes you a lot. I talked to his Ghost about the psychic thing."

"What'd he say?" Silvan asked, pinning her hair in place.

Bramble bobbed in place as he spoke. "Mostly we compared notes. This resonance is similar to the way a Ghost bonds with a Guardian. The neural symbiosis means that you and I basically grow into one another. Our life force is linked in such a way that we enhance each other constantly. When two Awoken meet who share this resonance, it's like a meeting of the minds. I found a record of two engineers who had it. They were responsible for most of the recent advancements in technology and engineering out here in the Reef. They constantly sharpened each other."

"So it doesn't have to be a romance thing," said Silvan in relief. "Not like soul mates or anything."

"More like brain mates," Bramble said with a laugh. "Resonance is exactly that. You two can act in sync. Great for battle, or building things, or complicated dance choreography. Any romance is secondary. It's possible, if you want it. But the resonance can be so much more."

"That makes me feel better," Silvan said, glancing at Crow's ship. "This isn't the first time a guy's fallen for me. Usually it's more annoying than anything. But I feel so sorry for Crow. It's getting to me, seeing him enslaved like this."

"I know what you mean," Bramble agreed.

Silvan eyed him. "What's your opinion of all this?"

"Mine?" said Bramble. "You're my star-child and you always will be. If you want to marry a vagabond Guardian who everybody hates, I'm right here with you."

"Don't be like that," Silvan said. "I heard that sarcasm."

"It's the exact truth," said Bramble. "He's not a good investment right now. Guard your heart against him until things change. I'm sure he'd rather do right by you. He's very gentle and honorable. He won't speak for you until he's in a better position. Just watch."

"Or he'll find someone else," Silvan murmured.

Bramble nodded. "That's a possibility. It's why you need to guard yourself."

A ping arrived from Crow's ship, followed by his voice on the radio. "Good morning, Silvan. Ready to burn some cryptoliths?"

"Ready and waiting," said Silvan.

She followed him down to land in the same places they did the previous day. It was a hazy, misty morning in the Dreaming City. Trees and boulders were reduced to picturesque shapes. Crow approached with an oil can in hand, a vague silhouette at first. When he reached Silvan, his cloak was beaded with dewdrops. "Be careful," he said. "Hive insects explode out of the core of each cryptolith as it burns. I usually kill them with grenades."

"Thanks for the warning," Silvan said. She studied his face under his hood. "Is something wrong?"

His resonance was off-key, subdued, as if he hadn't slept well. Anxiety radiated from him in shades of yellow-green.

"Dreams," he said. "Let's go."

They rode their sparrows to the first cryptolith and Crow doused it in oil. Then he lit it, and they stood back at a safe distance and watched it burn.

"I had the same dream again," he said. "Flying and so forth. Do you think … if I got clearance to return to Earth … you could come with me?" 

"To the Shard of the Traveler?" Silvan said. "Of course I could. I've never seen the Traveler speak to someone before, and I think it'll be fascinating."

Crow smiled wryly. "Am I a science experiment?"

"Yes," Silvan teased. "A giant experiment in paracausal energies. I'll write a paper and be as famous as Osiris."

"I'll say that I knew you when you were still nobody," Crow replied. "And then--watch it, the cryptolith is about to blow."

Silvan was treated to the lovely sight of a cryptolith falling apart and spilling its insect-ridden core across the rocks. She and Crow burned the crawling mass with fire and lightning, then stamped any survivors underfoot.

"And thus we prove the limits of evolution," Silvan said. "A bug may evolve resistance to poison. But it can't grow resistant to a heavy boot." She ground a particularly large insect under her heel with a satisfying crunch.

"Survival of the fittest," said Crow, mashing several insects in a graceful series of dance moves. "Which is a fallacy. It's actually survival of the luckiest."

"The Darkness thinks it's survival of the fittest," Silvan said, scraping off a bug that was climbing her leg. She stamped it hard. "The Final Shape is just the ultimate survivor. Which is dumb and arbitrary. The Darkness just wants an excuse to kill everything."

"You know a lot about Darkness," Crow said, scanning the area for moving shapes.

Silvan wiped her boots off on a sharp-edged stone. "The Darkness is in the solar system now. And it's positively chatty. The thantonauts have been writing down things that will make your blood run cold. Jayesh is supposed to be off studying it. I hope he's all right."

"Jayesh is?" Crow said. He and Silvan both looked at the sky, seeking Jupiter's bright speck, visible even in daylight. "I hope he survives. I've wanted to talk to him again. Come on, let's purge the next cryptolith."

Crow poured oil across the cryptolith in the courtyard in brooding silence. He stood at a distance, arms folded and head bowed, his thoughts turned inward. Silvan barely felt any resonance at all from him. She watched the fire and gave him his space. They killed the insect eruption in silence and moved on to the third cryptolith.

The fire in the Gardens of Esila would have also burned in silence, if Silvan hadn't said, "See that bush over there? That's where Hive worms tried to eat me alive."

Crow grunted. But a moment later, he said, "Light. Darkness. Both of them speaking to mortals. Am I allowed to say that it scares me spitless?"

"You're allowed to say whatever you want," Silvan said. "It scares me, too. But it's also really interesting. We're part of a cosmic argument between the Dark and the Light. Don't you want to see who wins?"

"It'd better be the Light," Crow said, drumming his fingers against his arm. "If it doesn't, we'll all die."

They killed the inevitable scatter of insects. As they were leaving, Crow picked a white flower and handed it to Silvan. "For your hair."

His resonance was still so drawn in that she sensed nothing from him. She took the flower with a sharp look at his face, trying to discern his intent. He wouldn't meet her eyes, and a faint flush touched his cheeks.

"Thank you," Silvan said. She tucked the flower's stem into her braid, above her left ear. She kept her helmet off all the way back to their ships. Crow said nothing, but he drove his sparrow a little behind hers and to the left, where he could stare at her for the whole drive.

By the time they reached their ships, his resonance was back, and so strong that it nearly overwhelmed her. Admiration and affection all but blinded her psychic sense. He said nothing, but he watched her as she stowed her sparrow. She paused and gave him a wave before she boarded her ship. He turned away as if he hadn't seen and boarded his own ship without a word.

Baffled, Silvan strapped herself into the pilot seat. "He felt so friendly, but he didn't act friendly. I thought this mind link meant that we'd always understand each other."

"You and I don't always get along," Bramble said, flitting about the cockpit and communicating with the ship's computer. "And I'm essentially part of you. You don't really know Crow that well. He's an introvert and you're an extrovert. Let him alone."

Silvan pulled the flower from her hair and inspected it. "He liked seeing me wear this. He was almost panting after me. Then, boom, nothing."

"Introvert, like I said," Bramble replied. "Think it through, star-child."

Silvan pondered it all the way back to the Tangled Shore, but she remained mystified by the time they landed. 

Crow's voice spoke over the radio. "Don't disembark. I'll get clearance and we'll go on to Earth. If I don't get cleared, feel free to go, anyway."

"Right," Silvan said. She waited nervously, thinking of the bomb in the Ghost and of what that might mean. But Crow returned a few minutes later, walking with a spring in his step. "Cleared for a week, maybe two. Let's go."

Relieved, Silvan matched his course toward Earth. She was glad to jump to NLS and rest for a while.

Within five hours they were in high Earth orbit, and in another hour they made their approach to the European Dead Zone. They landed their ships in a meadow a few miles from the forest that surrounded the Shard of the Traveler. The Shard loomed above the treetops, a curved, fang-like shape that poured out an unceasing stream of thunderclouds. Lightning danced and thunder rumbled in the distance. 

"Have you ever been up to the Shard?" Crow asked, shouldering a sniper rifle this time.

"Once," Silvan said. "When we lost the Light in the Red War. I hoped it would give me my Light back, but … it didn't." She didn't like to relive that particular gut-wrenching disappointment. She hadn't been back since then, privately giving up the Shard as a waste of time.

"Any idea of the territory?" Crow asked. "Dangers and so forth?"

"The Fallen come and go," Silvan said. "The Eliksni, I mean. They try to salvage parts off it. I don't know how far they get. Most of the Traveler's materials are impervious to modern steel alloys."

"How about the forest?" Crow said. He stood gazing up at the hills and their dark trees. "Looks like a fire's been through in the last couple of years."

"There was a forest fire, yes," Silvan said. "It cleared out the dead wood, but the vegetation that replaced it is … strange. The Light has polluted the ground, and the stuff growing from it is very alien. It warped the animals, too. I know some warlocks who study the area."

"Don't you?" Crow asked, setting off. "I thought ecology was your field."

"Actual terraforming, yes," Silvan said. "This is pollution, not real terraforming. Believe me, we don't want to replicate what's going on around the Shard." She fell into step beside him, and for a while neither of them spoke. There was something spooky about the forest with its misshapen trees and strange blue growths. Blue flowers with oblong petals grew everywhere, looking more like fungus than flora. It was eerily quiet, with no animals or birds. But they startled something that crashed away through the brush to their left, making them jump and reach for their weapons.

"My dreams always led here," Crow murmured. Doubt seeped from him like a gray fog. "But this place is … not good. Not the Light I was looking for."

They reached the edge of a deep ravine. The Shard's impact to Earth centuries ago had opened huge fissures in the ground. This was one of them, long since overgrown with moss and hanging vines studded with glowing blue spores. 

Crow stood for a long moment, gazing into the ravine, then up at the Shard, high above them. "I think," he said slowly, "we should follow this chasm. It will lead us to where we need to go."

Silvan peered up the rocky, overgrown slope. Comparatively, the floor of the ravine was even and open, with a stream trickling through. "We could go down there. It looks like an easier route."

"I'd rather stay up here and watch for danger," Crow said. "The silence weighs on my mind."

"That's one reason I'd rather be down there," Silvan admitted. "The water makes noise."

They exchanged a look, each feeling the other's uneasiness. Then Silvan drew on her Light and stepped into the ravine, floating to the bottom like a leaf. The water chattered over the stones, but the echoes off the ravine walls sounded like voices talking. It was somehow worse.

They continued on, Silvan in the ravine, Crow above. A few hundred feet further on, Silvan came upon something small and glowing resting on a rock. She picked it up. "Hey Crow, I found another of those feathers." She held it up.

He peered down from the top of the ravine. "I think it means we're going the right way. The Traveler is giving us guidance."

Silvan tucked the feather into her robe's inner pocket, where it made a warm spot against her ribs. It was comforting, somehow, like a gift from a friend. But she'd barely walked three steps when a new sound split the silence.

In the middle of the ravine, reality tore and peeled open. The rocks and moss curled in on themselves, a black hole appearing beyond them. It rippled and bent the light, the edges seeming to burn. Out of it crawled the Taken.

Silvan identified them the instant the portal appeared, because psychic pain stabbed through her brain. She whipped Xenophage off her shoulder and braced herself, her eyes watering from the pain. The first Taken to drop to the ground had once been Eliksni. But now it was a black shadow of an alien with a spot of burning white where its face had once been. Its hands and feet burned white where it stood, as if contact with the physical world caused immense friction. It moved toward her, its whole body wobbling like gelatin. The head drooped sideways, as if trying to focus on her. It screamed.

Taken could only scream, not speak. The power that had stripped them bare and swallowed them, only to vomit them back into reality, left them with only rage and hate. They had no memory of who they had been, no will left to govern their own actions. The Hive gods drove them with their minds, and the Taken made effective puppets.

Silvan put a Light pellet through the glowing spot on the first demon's face. But more were coming--dozens of writhing, burning bodies, dozens of glowing spots where there had once been faces. Inside her head, multiple things were happening. The psychic pain fluctuated, growing stronger, then weaker. Bramble was doing his best to filter all the frequencies at once. Beside him, Omar was swearing inside her machine gun. "Taken! I hate them worse than Hive!"

Then there was Crow. "Taken up here, too!" Then he was fighting, his mind cool and focused. Silvan mentally hooked herself into that state, trying to keep herself detached, not give in to the claustrophobic fear of fighting Taken in the bottom of a narrow ravine and _oh Light they're right in my face._

She tried to keep herself calm by identifying each type of Taken. She'd fought them before, and it helped to study them as she killed them, keeping her mind separate from the fear that threatened to send her into a shrieking panic. If she lost control, they would swarm her and snuff out her Light. Taken Cabal, Taken Hive, Taken Vex, Taken humans … those scared her the worst. She shot them quickly and accurately, each one collapsing in on itself and being sucked back into the other reality.

Suddenly the fight was over. Silvan had to stand for a moment, wiping away a nosebleed. The Taken always seemed to break something inside her head. Bramble healed her. Then she loaded a fresh belt into her machine gun, panting, "Thanks, Omar, you're the best."

"I know," he replied smugly.

"Crow?" Silvan called. "Are you all right?"

"Unhurt," he called down, peering over the edge of the ravine. "I've found that dancing in unpredictable patterns throws off their aim. The Taken only travel in straight lines."

"This ravine is only ten feet wide," Silvan replied. "You try dancing when you're trying to aim forty pounds of angry machine gun."

Crow smirked. “Sounds like a personal problem.”

Silvan glared up at him. “If you were down here, I’d smack you.”

“That’s why I’m not down there,” Crow replied. 

His humor touched her mind and irritated her. Silvan exclaimed, “I’m trying to be serious, and you’re making fun of me! And I think the Taken were attracted by those feathers!”

Crow’s humor instantly evaporated. “I didn’t think of that. We’re each carrying one, aren’t we?”

Silvan pulled hers out and held it in the palm of her hand. It glowed in the dim light at the bottom of the ravine, sparkling where each barb caught the light. "The Taken feed on Light," she said softly.

Crow heard her, despite being thirty feet overhead. "They do, but they're also mindless. Something drives them. Savathun, perhaps. What is up there that the Hive god of secrecy wishes to keep us from finding?"

Silvan tucked the feather away again. "Let's find out. It'll take more than a few Taken to stop us."

They continued on, following the ravine for another mile up the slopes beneath the fragment of paracausal machine being. Silvan had to use her powers to jump-fly from ledge to ledge as the ravine bottom became choked with fallen rocks and trees.

The Taken stalked them. Often, Silvan rounded a corner, only to hear the bark of Crow's rifle, and see a Taken coil in on itself and vanish down a screaming black hole. They appeared out of nowhere and waited in silence to ambush the two Lightbearers. Silvan grew tense and jumpy. The Taken awaited her around almost every bend.

She jumped to a ledge and found a place where the ravine forked. In the V-shaped piece of land between the two ravines was a single small tree, clinging to life despite the polluted ground. Sitting on a branch was a glowing white bird.

At first, she thought it was another Taken. Then she realized that reality was not warped and burning around it, and it caused her no pain. Instead, it attracted her with a comforting, soothing chime.

"Crow," she said softly.

The bird cocked its head and fixed an eye on her. It was a crow--a white one.

Crow must have sensed her change of mental state. He jumped down from above and landed beside her in a crouch. Then he stood and they both gazed at the bird. It was rare and wonderful, a creature of Light itself, its plumage glittering in the sunlight.

"What does it mean?" Crow whispered. He stepped forward, raising a hand. The bird watched him, for all the world like a living creature. Silvan felt his wonder and sudden joy. It mingled with her own cautious excitement. 

"It must be from the Traveler," Silvan said. "Just like the feathers."

Crow touched the bird's wing with his fingertips. At once it leaped off the branch and flew off, but not as if it were escaping. It flew down the ravine fork and landed on another ledge, where it folded its wings and waited for them.

"Follow it?" Silvan said.

"I think so," Crow said.

Together they leaped back and forth across the ravine and picked their way along narrow ledges. When they drew even with the bird, it flew off again, its glow illuminating the stone walls.

In this way, it led them to a tiny box canyon at the foot of the Shard. In the middle of the canyon was a broken piece of the Traveler.

It was a mound of the white outer shell, cracked and crumbled from its impact with the ground. It stood about fifteen feet high, embedded in the rocks. No pollution had leaked from it--the area around it was clean of blue growths. The white bird flew to it and landed on a rock beside it. On the rock near the bird was another white object.

Silvan and Crow approached cautiously, unsure of what was happening. The Light was so strong here that Silvan felt as if she were walking into a star. The visible daylight was no brighter, but the sense of magic was so strong, it made lightning spark at her fingertips and crackle in her hair. Beside her, Crow's hands flickered with fire that raced up his arms.

At the foot of the piece of the Traveler, they found the frame of a gun. The bird rested one foot on the barrel. It fluttered backward and peered up at them with a beady, glowing eye.

Their Ghosts appeared and scanned the weapon and the bird.

"It resembles an older model of hand cannon called Hawkmoon," said Bramble. "But this is constructed out of the same electroweak matter that composes the Traveler. You could run it over with a tank and it wouldn't harm it."

"Can I touch it?" Crow said.

Silvan met his questioning glance. "I'm pretty sure it's for you. A gift from the Traveler. That's a crow sitting there."

He gazed at the bird, then the weapon. After a moment, he murmured, "Spider named me. I never thought--" He broke off and touched the gun. Then he lifted it in both hands, turning it over to examine both sides. "I never thought the Traveler would know my name," he concluded, so quietly that Silvan barely heard him.

"It knows all of its Guardians," Silvan replied. "Do you think that gun works?"

Crow broke the barrel and peered into the cylinder. "It appears to be intact. All it needs are bullets. Glint, can you synth fifty caliber bullets?"

"I can, indeed," said Glint. "This weapon would blow large holes in attackers."

Crow weighed the gun in his hands, but his gaze fixed on the fragment of the Traveler. "I never cared for hand cannons," he murmured. "I don't like the sound they make. And yet, it created one for me. Why?"

"I think it's symbolic," Silvan said. "Like the trees in the Dreaming City."

Glint transmatted a handful of large shells into Crow's hands. He loaded them into the cylinder, spun it, and snapped the barrel closed. "It feels like it's missing something," he said, holding it up and sighting it back up the canyon. "You see these tiny crystals here, and here? I think they're supposed to glow."

"Oh, maybe you need to charge it with Light!" Silvan exclaimed. "Jayesh built a gun he had to charge up. It was hard to do." Her admiration burst from her in a wave. To Crow, it was like being hit in the face with a soppy, warm sponge.

"Did he, really?" Crow said, eyeing her. "Why are you so into him, anyway? He already has a girl."

Silvan's feelings switched to horrible embarrassment at the speed of light. She turned a fascinating shade of red-violet. "I just--he only--I don't really--"

Crow laughed suddenly. "Don't," he said. "I don't need to hear you rationalize it. So. This Hawkmoon gun needs Light, you think?"

Silvan gulped and nodded, barely able to speak. "Yes, Light."

Crow summoned fire to his free hand. He touched the crystals with it. They glowed for a second, then turned dim and dull again. “Hm, this isn’t quite right. I’ll have to come at this from a different direction.” He turned toward the Traveler fragment. He held out a hand to touch the rough, cracked surface. To his surprise, a wisp of Light, like smoke, wafted out of it and encircled his hand. He pulled his hand away and glanced at Silvan. He had the strangest feeling that he’d done this very thing before.

Silvan’s eyes were round and very bright. “I’ve never seen that happen. I think it’s trying to talk to you.”

Crow drew a deep breath and steadied himself. He held out Hawkmoon in both hands, hoping to capture more of that wispy, intelligent Light.

Suddenly the sense of radiance in the air around them dimmed. Silvan drew a sharp breath and shrank closer to Crow. The Light was choked out by sudden Darkness, eclipsing the brilliance and warm friendliness, replacing it with cold distance, isolation, and silence. Crow identified the feeling, measured it, and stood against it, drawing on the Light within himself, instilled in him by Glint and his connection with the Traveler. He shifted his grip on Hawkmoon, his fingers adjusting to the unfamiliar grip, locating the trigger. It was sized exactly right for his hand. His other arm went around Silvan’s shoulders. “It’s only the Taken,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”

“Do you feel the malice?” she said, shivering. “Something doesn’t want you talking to the Traveler.”

“I feel it,” said Crow. A mind held both of them, despising them with intense, envious hatred. It wished to rend their very atoms and scatter them across the fabric of space. But first, it wanted them to feel pain. He gazed around the box canyon without blinking. The rock walls rose hundreds of feet overhead. “This place is the perfect trap. One exit. Quick, don’t let them cut us off.”

As they picked their way over the rocky ground toward the canyon mouth, Silvan said, “Do you think the Traveler meant to trap us?”

“No,” Crow said. “The fragment has been here for centuries. I think Savathun put up a token resistance, knowing that we’d try still harder to come here. A tidy little trap for a couple of foolhardy Lightbearers.”

Silvan stepped away, squaring her shoulders and lifting Xenophage from its strap. Her silver eyes flashed. “Crow,” she said. “We are Guardians.”

Her ferocity brushed his mind, like the passing flank of a hunting tiger. He mentally ran his hand along that tiger’s back, admiring it, praising it for its spunk. Then he turned away and gripped Hawkmoon with both hands.

The Taken boiled into the third dimension, burning and smoking where their edges touched reality. They screeched at the sight of the Guardians and darted forward to attack. Even when they traveled in zigzags, they had to do it in straight lines, pausing to change directions. Crow danced away from them with graceful footwork. Silvan tried, less adept, but graceful in a different way.

Hawkmoon’s bark was sharp and metallic, a little strange-sounding, since it wasn’t made of metal. Perhaps the electroweak matter had similar density and hardness? But Crow didn’t have time to think about it. The gun efficiently punched through the semi-solid bodies of the Taken, sending them shrieking back to their own dimension.

Then another portal tore open and a huge monster of a Taken slithered into the daylight, sullying it with its very presence.

Crow had no idea what species it was. Some unknown alien race that had been claimed by the Hive gods in the ancient past during their genocidal rush through the galaxy. It stood on two legs, had a long, flat tail, and three arms--one on each side and a third, smaller one in the middle of its torso. The spot of light on its face obscured its head, which was a shame, because its eyes were probably as alien as the rest of it. It carried a strange, triangle-shaped weapon with one end blossomed open. It aimed this weapon at them and fired.

Silvan and Crow darted in opposite directions as white, burning projectiles arced through the air, almost lazily, and melted the stone where they’d been standing. It splashed, and every droplet burned deep into stone or soil.

Crow and Silvan trained their weapons on it and let loose, but their bullets sparked off a force field that surrounded the demon like a second skin. It roared at them, its voice too deep to scream.

Silvan yelled, “Use Light on it!” She leaped into the air and erupted into lightning, flickers of electricity running over her whole body. She summoned her sword and dove at the demon. Crow watched, awaiting another display like last time, when she’d destroyed the Wrathborn.

But the demon turned, aimed its weapon at her, and bathed her in burning plasma.

Her mind shrieked in unbearable pain as she died, aware that she’d made a terrible mistake, but unable to change it. But the worst thing was the way she reached for Crow as her life ended, begging for help. Then she was gone.

“Guardian down,” Glint said in Crow’s ear.

Crow knew that she wouldn’t stay dead, that her Ghost would resurrect her. But seeing her lightning quenched and her body fall to the ground, as well as feeling her pain and distress, sent a burst of rage through his brain. With it came a clarity of mind he’d lacked. He reached into his ammo pouch and pulled out the glowing feather. He pressed it into the barrel of Hawkmoon. It melded into the barrel and created the imprint of a feather there, still softly glowing. Then Crow raised the gun and let his Light blaze through it. His whole body began to shine with Light, burning like a pyre that did not consume. Hawkmoon brightened like a sun in his hand, the feather on the barrel glowing brightest of all.

Crow strode forward, placing himself between the demon and Silvan’s body, where her Ghost had just appeared, his shell open as he began the lengthy task of resurrection.

Crow fired.

The Light roared from him, channeled through Hawkmoon. It fired not bullets, but blasts of Light. It tore through the demon's shield, shredding away chunks of its flesh in oily splatters and black smoke. The blot on its face that represented the will of another turned toward him in withering hatred, beating against his mind in a focused onslaught. But his time with Silvan had taught him how to fence out such an attack. He shielded himself with the thought of her, and with the Light, itself. He put a blast of Light through that blot of awareness, scrubbing reality clean of its blight. The demon shrieked and spiraled away into nothing, its link with reality severed.

Silence fell. The Taken were gone, purged away by the Light. The oppressive sense of Darkness faded away, and radiance grew in its place.

Crow knelt beside Silvan's Ghost and held out a hand, his palm glowing with soft golden Light. Bramble's little sphere of Light expanded, growing brighter, as he accepted the help. "Thank you," he said. Then he sent out a pulse of Light. The charred corpse filled back out into Silvan, her robes flickering back into existence, first as data, then as matter. She opened her eyes and sat up, groping for her machine gun. "The Taken! Where are they?"

"I handled them," Crow said. "It's all right."

She smiled shakily and climbed to her feet, tucking her ragged hair behind her ears. She fussed with her hair rather than address Crow. "You couldn't bring me back with my hair done?" she asked her Ghost.

Bramble looked apologetic. "I rebuilt you from my data on your physical structure, Silvan. Your hair looked like that when you died."

"It did not." Silvan didn't look at Crow, but stooped and picked up Xenophage. "Look at this! That plasma gun warped the frame. This will be crazy expensive to repair!" She slung it over her shoulder and walked off, still without ever looking at Crow. Humiliation was a thundercloud around her, crackling with bolts of embarrassment. Crow walked a short distance behind her, letting her have space. They climbed out of the ravine and walked back through the dark forest like that, Crow only staying close enough to keep her within sight.

As the trees changed from creepy mutants into more normal sweetgum and birch, Silvan stopped and turned. "Crow?"

"Yes?" he said, catching up at last.

"I'm sorry," she said. "For acting like this. I … I really hate dying. Then I died in front of you in the dumbest way possible … and I was trying to impress you with how brave I was … and I was just stupid."

"It's all right," he said hastily. "I've died a lot, too. And I think you're very brave."

Silvan stood there a moment, her eyes downcast, lip between her teeth. Crow felt her struggling to master her shame, and pretended he felt nothing. This resonance thing made life much more difficult, always having to pretend to know less about her than he did.

She drew a breath and said, "May I see Hawkmoon?"

Crow had absently stuck the pistol through his belt until he could get a holster for it. He drew it and handed it to her, grip-first. Silvan took it and turned it over and over, studying every inch. She ran her fingers over it and tapped it with her nails, exploring the strange not-metal material. Crow watched her with a mixture of affection and sadness. He'd seen her die, felt her pain and shock. How did Guardians grow accustomed to seeing each other die? Did they accept it as a hazard of the job? She was so alive, so curious and smart. But learning more about her, as a person, and then seeing her delicate mortality, had changed the nature of his feelings for her. He wanted to protect her from harm, somehow. Never let her be hurt again. But what could he do? He was Spider's enforcer with no resources whatsoever, no way to shelter and care for a woman. So he stood there and said nothing, keeping his mind carefully locked away.

Silvan found the spot where the glowing feather had been infused into the barrel. She studied it for a long moment. "Bramble, was that feather I was carrying obliterated?"

"No, I saved it," her Ghost replied. "It was impervious to the plasma, but I didn't want the Taken to steal it." He transmatted the feather into her hands.

Silvan carefully placed the feather against the opposite side of the barrel, matching it with the first as closely as she could. The second feather melded into the barrel, too. She passed the gun back to Crow. "Now it matches."

He took the pistol and admired the feather pattern on both sides. "A gift from the Traveler," he said softly. "Enhanced by both of us."

"This way you'll never forget me," said Silvan.

Crow's heart turned over at the words. "Are you leaving, then?"

She gazed at him, her silver eyes as bright as stars. Her mind touched his, curious, concerned. She must not be able to feel anything from him at all. He'd succeeded in locking himself up tighter than an airlock seal.

After a moment, she said, "I wasn't planning to leave … but why are you shut down like this?"

"The Taken attacked my head," he said, tapping a temple. "I haven't let my guard down. We may encounter more."

"Right," she said, scanning the dark woods around them. "Let's head back to our ships."

Crow didn't have the heart to tell her that he'd shut her out for her own safety. If she fell in love with him, he couldn't return her affection with any semblance of honor. He shouldn't have let his own feelings run away with him.

No more Taken appeared. By the time they reached their ships, Silvan was giving Crow curious looks. 

"What's wrong?" she asked, touching his hand. "You're still all closed up. Did the Taken hurt you?"

"No," Crow said. "Don't worry about it. I'm learning to control my psychic sense. That's all."

Silvan studied him. Then she surveyed his ship, with Spider's logo burned into the wing.

"I'm going to free you from Spider," she said.

"Impossible," Crow replied.

Silvan's eyes flashed. "Nobody deserves to have a bomb in their Ghost, to live the way he's making you live. I'm going to free you. And I'm going to help you get far away from him. I don't care what I have to do."

Crow smiled a little. "You're welcome to try."

Silvan studied him for a moment, then smiled. "Another campfire dinner, do you think?"

"Sure," said Crow, remembering the last one fondly. "I'll meet you in Trostland. Helmets on."

"Helmets on," Silvan agreed.

* * *

When Silvan returned that evening, she brought Madrid with her. The three of them had a great time talking about Hawkmoon and pondering why the Traveler would arm Crow with such a weapon. Silvan had brought along packages of fat sausages in several different flavors, as well as buns and toppings. They ate and ate and talked and talked, laughing freely and forgetting to worry about anything.

Silvan had brought along a bottle of wine to celebrate. They all had a glass, but Crow drank the most. He became very cheerful, getting up to demonstrate dance moves and how to outmaneuver Taken, until he fell over and couldn't get up again.

Their Ghosts hovered together at the edge of the ring of firelight, talking quietly. Madrid's Ghost, Rose, was a shy, soft-spoken Ghost in a rosebud shell. She rarely showed herself, but tonight was an exception.

"Crow's Light is strong," Rose was saying. "He's such a young Lightbearer, but he's as powerful as a centuries-old Guardian. He's as bright as Saint-14."

"I'm very proud of him," Glint said, twirling his shell around his core. "We've been through so much, and he hasn't given up."

"Silvan was serious about freeing you," said Bramble. He and Rose looked hard at Glint, and the wires protruding from his shell. It was horrible to think that their brother Ghost, with his unquenchable optimism and cheerful nature, was the one carrying his own doom about inside him.

Glint returned their gaze. "I haven't given up, and Crow hasn't, either," he said. "We'll get through this. I'm very thankful for you two. He needs friends so badly." He drew his shell down in a frown. "I still don't know whether the resonance is a good thing or a bad thing, though."

The Ghosts watched their partners for a moment. Silvan was covering the snoring Crow with a blanket. She furtively kissed his cheek, then went to sit with Madrid, where they talked earnestly about how to free Crow.

"Uh oh," said Bramble. 

"I know," said Glint.

Rose made a sound like a sigh. "Do your Guardians have feelings for one another? Because that could become awkward. The Vanguard doesn't know about Crow."

"Well," Bramble said, with a glance at Glint. "Silvan doesn't want to have feelings for him. But Crow is so … unusual. And he's been very kind to her. I don't know what will happen, especially if they do free Crow and bring him home to the Last City. Face it, he can't live in the wilds like this forever."

"I know," Glint said softly. "We've talked about it a little. It's hard to plan when the future is so uncertain." He gazed at his sleeping partner, his blue eye soft with affection. "His feelings for Silvan have moved beyond a crush, now. But he is aware of our precarious position, and he's trying to hold himself aloof from her so as not to hurt her if things go wrong."

"Imagine you are freed from Spider," Rose said quietly. "And he shows his face in the Tower. Do you know what they'd do to him?"

Glint shivered. "The thought keeps me awake nights. But he can't stay alone forever. He's … I know he doesn't come off this way, but he has a gregarious streak. He likes people. He and Silvan would be happy together. If they could figure out their resonance, they would be an incredible team. But … his past is such a huge, looming shadow."

"I was there," Rose said. "When Cayde died."

Bramble and Glint looked at her warily. But Rose said nothing more, simply floated there without expression, gazing at Madrid.

"I've heard stories," Glint murmured.

Rose nodded. "In his past life, Crow was a very sick man. Sick as in unwell. He was afflicted in the Black Garden and never recovered. Seeing him now, healed and whole, with no memory of the Darkness … it does my heart good, if you can believe it. Madrid has taken years to forgive him, but we've worked through it. I believe the Vanguard can, too."

Glint said, "You give me hope, Rose."

She emoted a smile, her eye turning into an upward V. "There's always hope where the Light is concerned. And the Light has chosen Crow. It favors him, even. Look at that weapon it gave him. It might even be capable of taking down the High Celebrant."

The three Ghosts were silent a moment, thinking through the implications of this.

"I think," said Glint, "you're onto something."

"One more hunt," Bramble said. "We stalk the most dangerous game."

"One more," Rose agreed. "Then … we'll see."

End of part 3


	8. Part 4: High Celebrant Hunt

The High Celebrant walked the realms, singing a chorus of war and blood to his queen, Xivu Arath. As he traveled, he gathered followers and worshipers, fellow celebrants in the hymn of war. All races fell sway to the dance. All races loved war, worshiped war, and would spill their blood in endless war for all time. Xivu Arath would drink their tithes until her strength was immeasurable.

He drove his sword deep into the Reef, burying the cryptolith seed. It would germinate and grow into a symbiotic organism, collecting more worshipers and slicing away the edges of their minds that had nothing to do with war. More seeds grew now in the Dreaming City. He would sew them across the planets and moons until all life in this system was offered in tribute to his queen.

As he danced and sang and conducted the celebration of war, he hunted for the missing queen. Savathun must answer for her deeds. But she of the secrets had hidden herself away, even from her own court, and could not be found. Her own brood could not tell him where she had gone, even when he wrung the life from their feeble bodies.

Always the High Celebrant returned to the Dreaming City. It was a pleasant place, rich in energies and spilled memory, lost tithes and woven wishes. It would make a grand tribute to his queen, once he wrested from the grasp of the secretive sister. He would find her and drag her to his queen, and she would heap him with riches …

What was this? Sudden pain tore the High Celebrant's sacred flesh. A leaden slug had torn through the flesh of his lower back. Who had done this? A Guardian?

A cryptolith called to him, it's song irresistible.

The High Celebrant pushed through the fabric of layered space, stepping from one reality to the next. He arrived in the Dreaming City beside a beautiful cryptolith, its spiral height flickering with soulfire.

Guardians awaited him, their bullets stinging like irritating flies. He brandished his sword. Their Light would be offered as tithe to Xivu Arath. War forever. War endless.

* * *

Silvan was not ready for this.

She was not ready when she and Crow met Osiris in the Dreaming City, and Osiris debriefed them about the High Celebrant and how they were to hunt it across dimensions. She was not ready to see Crow swig a dose of Queensfoil and step through a portal to the Ascendant plane, opened by Osiris. She was not ready when Osiris handed her a small bottle, too.

"Drink it all," he said, his eyes severe above his mask. "It's three ounces of distilled essence of Queensfoil. It will open your mind to the higher dimensions."

Silvan obeyed, her fingers shaking as she unscrewed the top. "I'm a warlock," she said, peering at the green liquid inside. "Not a Hunter. I wish Madrid was here, instead."

"He has personal reasons for staying behind," Osiris said. "He is watching the Shore in case the High Celebrant escapes us. You volunteered, Silvan Nerisis. Do not forget what this monster is capable of."

She met his eyes and remembered that the High Celebrant had been the reason Osiris no longer had a Ghost. It had caught him and had attempted to sacrifice him to Xivu Arath. But Sagira had detonated herself, her dying Light wiping out the runes that would have torn the Light and soul from her Guardian. 

Silvan had to go to Ikora to learn the details, because Osiris was unable to tell the story, himself. He could still barely bring himself to speak Sagira's name.

Silvan saw the pain and vengeance in the old warlock's eyes. She thought of Bramble, and of what it would do to her to watch him die. She threw back her head and drank the Queensfoil in two swallows, pushing past the horrible green taste and the burning cold trail it made down her throat.

Eyes watering, she handed the bottle back to Osiris. He jammed it in a pocket and lifted his pulse rifle. "Now, let's hunt."

Even though the three other cryptoliths had been destroyed, a fourth one had germinated and grown in the courtyard of the Halls of Reflection. Like its brethren, it had shattered the pavement and torn its way into reality, drawing in the unsuspecting with its aura and song. A collection of Eliksni, Hive, and Scorn crouched around it, silent, except for a cry or moan now and then. 

As Silvan studied them, she said into her helmet radio, "Crow, are you there?"

"Somewhat," was his answer, his voice static-filled with distance. "The Ascendant plane is nothing but swirling darkness. I'm tracking the High Celebrant now, learning how it moves through these realms. Standby." His voice dropped to a whisper.

Silvan readied a grenade, aimed carefully, and pitched it into the middle of the worshipers. Three-fourths of them died at once, and the rest charged her in insane rage. She brought Xenophage to bear on them, the machine gun aiming itself. All she had to do was hold it steady and let it swing right and left. Osiris shot aliens from a distance, letting Silvan keep their attention.

As soon as the aliens were down, Osiris came forward with the lure. The three mutagen canisters glowed a sickly yellow and green with a concoction designed to draw out the High Celebrant. Crow and Osiris had been closeted together for days, working Hive rituals to distill exactly the right types of essence from newly-killed Hive. Silvan didn't ask how Osiris knew such rituals, and he didn't volunteer any details.

Osiris slammed the lure into the base of the cryptolith as if driving a knife into the heart of the alien who had cost him his Ghost. He backed away to a safe distance. Silvan took a firm grip on Xenophage.

"You ready for this, Omar?" she thought. "This will be the next closest thing to taking down a Hive god."

"I was ready the day the witches strung me up and tore the Light out of me," he replied. "They made my Ghost watch before they killed her. More than one Ghost will be avenged today."

Silvan wordlessly patted Xenophage’s barrel. She braced herself and waited as the cryptolith spiraled out of the ground and ignited with green soulfire.

“Ha, tagged it!” Crow said suddenly over the radio. “It’s bleeding energy and is on its way back to you.”

He’d barely finished speaking before the monster tore through reality in a flash of its own soulfire. Blood and energy ran from its back, where Crow’s bullet had wounded it. Its black armor seemed to have darkened since Silvan had last seen it, the patterns grown more ornate. Its helmeted head turned toward her. It raised its sword and charged.

She immediately leaped into the air, soaring upward fifty feet, well out of reach of that deadly bone sword. Hanging in midair, supported by the Light, she let Xenophage seek its target. The machine gun's barrel swung down and to the right, unerringly locating the High Celebrant. Silvan squeezed the trigger. The kick of each pellet knocked her backward, sending her drifting in a long arc toward the far end of the courtyard.

The Celebrant roared and lifted its sword, even as chunks of its breastplate tore away, revealing the chitin and flesh beneath. At once, summoning circles blazed to life on the ground. More Hive appeared in the circles, all armed with energy weapons that could deal with the airborne warlock. A hail of energy bolts converged on Silvan. Her robes shredded and burning projectiles tore through her side and arm. She dropped to the ground with a shriek, hit the ground, and summoned a healing rift, where she crouched as the Light mended her wounds.

Osiris laid down suppressing fire, forcing the Hive to seek shelter behind the pillars that ringed the courtyard. The High Celebrant simply turned on the spot and vanished, leaving a black blot in reality to mark its passing.

"Crow," Silvan panted over the noise of gunshots, "the Celebrant is headed back to your side. It left this black thing behind it."

"Residual energy," Crow replied. "Similar to what we used in the lure this time. Bring the lure with you and touch that energy with it. It should open a portal to the Ascendant plane. Don't let it get away."

"Remember," Osiris added over the radio, "you must kill the High Celebrant in the Ascendant plane. Its life force is there. It cannot truly die in our reality."

"Right," Silvan said, looking down at her shredded, bloody robes. Her wounds were closed, and she could walk off the remaining pain, but she'd pay through the nose to have these robes repaired. She added Xenophage's fury to Osiris's fire, and they ended the attacks of the lesser Hive. Silvan fetched the lure from its spot in the cryptolith, hauled it to the blot in midair, and touched it.

Reality whooshed around her and suddenly she was in the Ascendant plane. It was a cold, utterly dry place of darkness that seethed and swirled like a living thing. Silvan stood on a broken fragment of tile floor that floated in black nothingness. The Queensfoil in her system let her sense the echoing distance in this place, as well as the sense of paths. There were so many paths, all overlapping, she had the sensation of staring into a vast amusement park full of roller coasters all tangled together like yarn. The High Celebrant knew every path and had darted into this jungle like a fleeing animal. But it left behind it a trail of bloody essence. The pavement before Silvan was spattered with it, growing a livid green in the dark. In the distance, more spatters marked another piece of floating stone. Silvan set out after it.

"Don't stay in there too long," Osiris warned her. "Xivu Arath will not take kindly to visitors in her realm."

"Believe me," Silvan said, making a long, careful leap across the void, "I plan to stay as short a time as possible."

As she traveled between pieces of broken, floating terrain, she cautiously extended her psychic sense, trying to detect the minds of enemies. There were plenty around, the life in them burning like coals to her enhanced mind. But none of them flared with the brightness of knowing of her presence. As long as she moved quickly and quietly, they wouldn't have a chance to notice her. Which was good, because some of them were terrible, alien minds of creatures she hoped never to meet--beings of pure hunger.

Bramble and Omar were brilliant lights that traveled with her. Bramble hid himself within Silvan's Light, but Omar blazed from inside Xenophage, leaving a blinding trail like a yellow ribbon. Silvan cupped a hand over the spot where his amber was, inside the gun, and hurried on.

She'd run for about five minutes when she sensed Crow's resonance. He was out there in those interwoven paths, stalking the same prey she now pursued. For a brief second, their thoughts echoed back and forth, a simple call and response without words.

_ Hello there. _

_ Hi! You all right? _

_ I'm fine. _

Then Silvan came upon another blot in midair, as if reality had closed upon itself improperly. She touched it. It snapped open, and she was back in the daylight of the Dreaming City.

She had emerged inside the old monastery, long since abandoned because of the time loop. The roof soared above her in graceful arches, and a wide staircase swept upward in a huge spiral. The blood trail led beneath the staircase and to the foot of a closed door.

Silvan eyed that door. "Bramble, how fresh is that trail?"

"Very," he replied. "Uh. What do you think is through there?"

"Death, probably," Silvan said. "Let's see if I can't even the odds."

Despite being a warlock, Silvan had spent enough time around Hunters to pick up some of their tricks. She cupped her hands together and built a proximity grenade out of Light. She crept up to the door and stuck the grenade to the lintel. A beam shone out of it at an angle. If anyone broke the beam, the grenade would detonate. She made another and set it on the opposite side of the doorway. Then she lifted the latch and pushed.

The door whipped open, tearing free of her fingers. The High Celebrant's sword slashed down, neatly severing the front panel of her robe from her belt. Silvan backed away, raising her machine gun. The Knight stalked forward, sword raised for another swing, and passed through the trigger beams.

Twin explosions rocked the monastery. The High Celebrant staggered and bellowed, raising its free hand to its head. Blood seeped from beneath its armor. It snarled and drove Silvan back with haphazard sweeps of its sword, then it turned away and vanished back into the Ascendant plane, leaving a blot of clogged portal behind.

"Crow, it's headed back to your side," Silvan said. She touched the blot with the lure, and it sprang open into a portal. She stepped back into the Ascendant plane. Again, the bloody essence trail led her down a steep series of broken steps and jagged chunks of landscape, fragmented and floating.

"The dead essences in that lure amaze me," Osiris said over the radio. "They allow you to pass between planes so easily."

Silvan ran in silence, keeping her mind very small and hard to notice. The embers of other minds were all about her, but their attention was fixed elsewhere. Crow was out there, too. The Queensfoil was in full effect, now, and their resonance was sharp and efficient in this dimension. He was stalking the High Celebrant--she could _see_ it, feel his shallow breaths, sense the way he used his Light to navigate. She leaned more on her Light, too. It acted like a compass, orienting her to the invisible terrain of this place. To think that a new Guardian could teach her such things--

She felt him raise his shotgun and fire. A looming dark shadow erupted with a fresh, glowing wound. The Celebrant snarled and drove him backward, then fled through another portal into reality. Crow fell several hundred yards and landed hard on a chunk of rock. She heard his breath leave him and felt his ribs snap.

"Crow!" she exclaimed.

"Follow it," he grunted. "Glint will have me up in a minute."

Silvan tracked the blood trail in a crazy zigzag and finally arrived at the place where the Celebrant had exited the plane. She peered downward, into the hazy darkness. She sensed Crow climbing back up on terrain that built itself according to his strength of will. His side hurt, but his Ghost was healing it. Crow sensed her attention and irritably pushed her away. _Go!_

Silvan applied the lure, opened the portal, and stepped back into the Dreaming City. Full sunlight dazzled her, and for a moment she stood still, letting her eyes adjust. She'd emerged from the wall of a building carved in the side of a cliff. Below her, stairs fell downward to three different terraces, ending in a long balcony that extended into space like the prow of a ship. The High Celebrant stood on the next terrace down, waiting for her.

As soon as her eyes fell upon it, the High Celebrant lifted its sword and spoke in the Hive tongue. She didn't follow it exactly, but the taunting tone burned meaning into her mind. He mocked her and her Light, promising to present her as an offering to his queen.

Silvan raised Xenophage, but the Celebrant ducked through a portal, reappearing on the next terrace down. Too far for an accurate shot. She descended the steps. "It's taunting me. Crow, where are you?"

"At your coordinates," Crow said. "Walking the other side of the same coin."

"It's bleeding pretty badly," Silvan said. "When I take the next shot, it'll head straight over to you."

"I'm ready," Crow replied.

Silvan couldn't feel his resonance from out in reality, but it was reassuring to imagine him walking beside her, hunting, watching. She reached the first terrace and aimed at the Celebrant on the second terrace. Again it ducked away, reappearing down on the balcony. Silvan descended the next flight. "Why are you running?" she muttered. "What are you planning, monster?"

As she reached the second terrace and raised her gun, the Celebrant gave her a crude Hive gesture, then stepped through a portal and vanished. This time, no blot remained behind.

"It's coming right at you, Crow," she said. 

He didn't respond.

"Crow?"

Osiris answered, instead. "The Celebrant stopped it's flow of essence and sealed the portal behind itself. If Crow is trapped in the Ascendant plane with it … then he's already dead."

"What?" Silvan exclaimed. "But--he has his Light! And his weapons! Don't you think he has a chance?"

"Not if he cannot escape," Osiris replied. "The Celebrant is powerful enough to harvest Guardians. I felt its strength when it nearly destroyed me. It is strongest in it's own realm."

Silvan felt as if the airy balcony and cheerful sunlight were smothering her. Crow was out there, being murdered, possibly having the Light torn from him, like Omar. And she was stranded on this side of the veil, unable to help. Her rebellious side flared to life--the side that had found a way to free Madrid from prison, and had vowed to free Crow from Spider.

"Bramble," she said, "I need ideas."

"You still have the lure," her Ghost replied. "You've been using it to open portals. Maybe the essence is enough to reopen the sealed link."

Silvan lifted the lure from its strap over her shoulder. "But where do I use it? There's no cryptolith here."

"Over there, on the dirt," said Bramble, pointing out a spot near the balcony. The cliffside had been turned into a small flower garden with an ornamental tree sheltering it. "The Dreaming City is half in the Ascendant plane as it is. The essence in the lure might interact with it one more time."

"It's worth a shot." Silvan hurried to the little garden, silently apologizing to the flowers for what she was about to do. She lifted the lure and drove it into the ground with all her strength. Essence bled into the soil. The flowers withered and blackened as if she had set them on fire.

Nothing seemed to happen. No portal appeared. But suddenly Crow's voice came through the radio, the connection reestablished. 

"I don't know if you can hear this," he was saying. "The High Celebrant has turned the tables and the hunter is now the hunted. But I just wanted to say that if things turn nasty for us out here, I just-- it's not your fault."

"Crow!" Silvan exclaimed, gazing wildly about the quiet, empty balcony. "I'm trying to get back to you, but there's no portal."

"I know," he said quietly. "I can sense it. The Celebrant is tracking me, no matter how I alter the trail behind me. It won't be long, now."

Silvan clenched her teeth. "Don't tell me I drank that horrible Queensfoil for nothing," she snarled to the empty terrace. "I'm in an Ascendant state and I am Awoken! I should be able to walk straight back into the Ascendant plane!"

Nearby, something shimmered. Silvan turned, looking hopefully for a portal. But instead, a broken chunk of pavement had appeared in midair, floating just as it did in the other reality. As she approached it, more of it appeared. She had the oddest feeling that it had been there all the time, but she hadn't been able to see it until she looked for it. She stepped onto the pavement and strode along it. It sprouted stairs ahead of her, then an arch over the balcony, then a sharp right turn and more stairs, corkscrewing into the sky.

"I might be headed your way," Silvan said to Crow. "Are you alive?"

"Just," he grunted, his voice strained with pain. He breathed heavily for a moment, as if running, then said, "Don't blame yourself, Silvan. This was my choice. Thank you for--for giving me a choice." 

Silvan wanted to run up the stairs, but she dared not increase her speed and overshoot a sudden turn. Crow's words burned in her heart. This was a last goodbye, wasn't it? He was expecting to die any minute, he and Glint together.

The stairs ended in a broken sliver of stone that jutted into space. A few feet beyond it, a portal flickered open, billowing with blackness. Silvan hurled herself through it.

She plunged back into the Ascendant plane and landed on more pavement that was a continuation of the rest. Thick darkness settled over her. She reached out with her enhanced mind.

Minds, all of them watching and irate. The High Celebrant was an angry song, bleeding with hate and triumph. He was not far away. And Crow--

His mind resonated to her, bringing with it the sensation of grinding pain in his legs and back. Flashes of Light as his Ghost healed him. The feel of Hawkmoon in his right hand, the grip slippery with sweat.

"Crow, I'm here!" Silvan exclaimed. She had to move forward, but she was afraid to stir. Should she help him, or hunt their quarry?

Her unspoken question reached Crow, as his state reached her. "Don't worry about me," he said. "I have a plan. Keep the Celebrant's attention for a few minutes, all right?"

Silvan set out into the darkness, traveling by feel and by her Light. Far off in the dimness, a light blazed, illuminating the ruins of a building floating in the murk. It was only a collection of pillars, a floor, and part of a wall. But things moved over there, and something glowed brightly enough to shed light into this lightless dimension. Silvan picked her way toward it over broken pavement and floating rocks that turned under her weight.

"You with me, Omar?" she thought to the preserved soul in her gun.

"Right here," Omar replied. "I'll kill that Hive bastard for you this time, my girl. I can smell his blood. He won't last long."

Crow said, very quietly, "My girl?"

"You can hear Omar?" Silvan said in surprise.

"Yes, I believe so," Crow replied, his voice on edge. "He calls you 'my girl'?"

"Let's not talk about this right now," Silvan said, stepping into the floor of the ruined building. The Celebrant stood before the glowing thing, which turned out to be a twenty-foot tall crystal, greenish white, and glowing like a lamp. "The Celebrant has a literal battery out here, and I think it's about a million deaths worth of crystallized soulfire."

“Celebrant first,” Omar said. “We have to keep his attention. Also, back off, Crow. She’s mine.”

“We’ll see,” Crow replied.

Silvan aimed at the Celebrant’s back. “Boys! Don’t do this now!” She squeezed the trigger and braced herself against the kick as Xenophage combined bullets and Light into a pellet of destruction.

The Celebrant stumbled forward onto all fours as the pellet punched through the armor on its back. It rose to its feet, lifting its sword and shield, teeth bared beneath its helmet. It roared a challenge. Its voice echoed out into the knotted spaces of the Ascendant plane, and all around them, the minds of nameless things turned in their direction. Silvan felt the weight of their attention, their burning scrutiny, and their hatred. Things leaped onto the platform, or appeared out of the darkness, itself. Some were Ascendant Hive with blazing minds and hardened chitin armor. Others were Taken, burning black and crawling like insects. They converged on Silvan.

She saw them coming and unleashed a shockwave of electricity. The weaker Taken and Hive disintegrated. The stronger ones staggered and cursed her, then sprang at her with blades and claws. Silvan leaped straight up in the air, propelled by her Light, and hung there, out of reach, pumping pellet after pellet into the Celebrant. His shield couldn’t protect all of him, so she hit his shoulders, knees, feet, and the top of his head. The Celebrant roared in pain. Essence splattered the stone.

“I’m almost to the portal where you came in,” Crow said. “Keep its attention a little longer.”

“We're leaving,” Glint added helpfully. “Better than being trapped until we die.”

Silvan really did not want to face this mob without backup, but she bit her tongue. Crow had a plan, right? She didn’t have time to argue. She couldn’t float forever, and her enemies knew it. She aimed another blast at the Celebrant’s head.

Suddenly, it flung its shield at her.

Silvan had a split second to see it flying at her face, whirling like a sawblade. Then the heavy bone struck her and knocked her out of the air, stunned and half-senseless. As she fell, she struggled against her own body, trying not to pass out. If she did, her enemies would tear her to pieces.

Bramble exclaimed, “I’ve got you! Hold on!” His healing Light blasted through her, dragging her back from the brink of unconsciousness. Silvan managed to land on her feet, but something was wrong with her right arm and Xenophage flopped to one side. Firing haphazardly, she cut a path through her enemies and ran for the edge of the ruined building, thinking to leap off onto one of the floating rocks. The Hive and Taken slashed at her retreating back, shredding her already ruined robes and the armor beneath. They opened wounds faster than Bramble could heal them.

She reached the edge and there was no pavement to jump to. She turned at bay to see the Celebrant edging sideways behind his followers, another portal opening at his outstretched hand.

“Crow, the Celebrant is escaping!” Silvan cried. She threw a grenade into the ranks of Hive and Taken, blowing a clear space among the milling bodies. The survivors scattered to take cover among the pillars.

The Celebrant said something that sounded mocking, then turned to the portal. But outlined in the portal was the silhouette of Crow, gripping Hawkmoon, Light blazing from its barrel.

“Now,” he said.

Silvan and Crow blasted the Celebrant from two directions. Without its shield, the alien could not defend itself. Its whole body erupted in soulfire as the Light tore into it from both paracausal weapons.

The Celebrant collapsed to the floor and its soulfire left its body, blasting upward to join the huge crystal. Silvan aimed Xenophage at the crystal, but the trigger clicked on a spent belt.

“I’m out,” Omar said.

Silvan held out a hand and Bramble transmatted another heavy ammo belt to her. As she pulled out the old belt and fed in the new one, Crow stepped through the portal and fired at the remaining Hive and Taken. They screeched in dismay at their champion’s death and scattered out into the darkness.

Then Crow began firing at the huge crystal. Each bullet blew off a larger and larger chunk, Hawkmoon glowing brighter and brighter, gaining strength. The last round in the chamber compromised the crystal. It shattered with a flash and boom, the fragments bouncing everywhere and flying off into the dark.

Crow lowered his arm and turned to Silvan, grinning. “We did it!”

“I thought you were leaving,” Silvan said, walking forward, feeding the fresh belt into Xenophage.

“No, never,” Crow said. “It was all part of the plan, remember?” His gaze fell on the amber within Xenophage, and the insect inside it. “Also, tell him to quiet down. His voice carries in this place.”

“I’ll talk as loud as I want,” said Omar. “Remember, I can only communicate telepathically. And until recently, Silvan was the only one who could hear me. Like I said, Crow, back off. I’ll blow you so full of holes, your Ghost will have to collect you with a shovel.” The barrel swung in Silvan’s hands to cover him.

Silvan yanked the machine gun aside. “Don’t you dare threaten another Guardian.”

Crow watched this, a smile playing about his lips. “I believe your gun is jealous.” He stooped and lifted the Celebrant’s heavy sword.

Silvan slung Xenophage across her back to ensure it wouldn’t shoot anyone. “I’m not sure who is jealous of whom.” She eyed the sword. “Another trophy?”

“No,” Crow said, walking along the Celebrant’s corpse to its head. “Spider will want proof of the Celebrant’s death. The head will do.” He beheaded the corpse as if chopping firewood. “Your Ghost can carry it. If I take the head back, Spider will assume I did all the work and won’t reward you.”

“At least I don’t have to touch it,” Silvan said, gazing at the hideous head with its chitin horns and helmet that was part of the skull. There was no blood. The Hive had almost no bodily fluids.

Bramble transmatted the head into storage, then shuddered. “Ugh, it feels nasty. Let’s dump this thing as soon as possible.”

Osiris said over the radio, "The Celebrant's signature has gone dark. Did you actually succeed?"

"Yes sir," said Crow. "The Celebrant is dead and we're bringing its head to Spider."

Osiris let out a long breath. "At last," he said, his voice low with emotion. "Sagira is finally avenged. Thank you, my friends."

"It was the least we could do," Silvan said. 

Crow and Silvan stepped through the portal, leaving the Ascendant plane behind. 


	9. Freedom

The Dreaming City felt warm and bright after the darkness and uncertainty of the other dimension. They’d emerged high on a hillside with a breeze blowing in their faces. This breeze showed Silvan exactly how shredded her robes were. She looked down at herself and ran her hands along the torn fabric, and the interwoven synthweave beneath that had been cut and peeled away like the rind of an orange. Her blue skin showed through in more places than she ever wanted.

"Bramble," she said, "you have a backup robe, right?"

Her Ghost appeared and gazed at her ruined robe. "Yes, and it's a good thing, too."

Crow looked at Silvan, then cleared his throat and turned his back. A mixture of awkwardness and humor radiated from him, mixed with an overly-warm admiration that Silvan really didn't want to feel right now.

"Oh Light," Silvan exclaimed. "Crow, you turn that resonance off this instant."

He laughed without turning around. Silvan held out her arms as Bramble transmatted her ruined robe into storage. She wore a body suit beneath it, but that had been torn, too. Crow had better not look at her right now.

Thankfully, he did not, only stood there and watched the landscape as Bramble transmatted a fresh robe onto Silvan's body. It was an old robe with a simple V-shaped chest panel and the Vanguard logo across the left shoulder. It fit a little too tight around her waist and under her arms.

"I'll have to alter the fit," Bramble said cheerfully. "You've gained six point three pounds since you wore it last."

"Oh my gosh, shut up," Silvan exclaimed.

"But why?" Bramble said. "It's mostly muscle from hauling Xenophage around."

Silvan pointed wordlessly at Crow, who was laughing with one hand over his mouth, still with his back turned.

Bramble looked at Crow, then at her. He vanished rather than reply. Silvan muttered under her breath about clueless Ghosts as she tugged at her robe's sleeves and yoke, settling it a little more comfortably. "All right, Crow, I'm decent."

He finally turned, still grinning. "I expected a hard, dangerous hunt today. But this was an unexpected bonus."

"I am buying a set of Titan armor when I get home," Silvan said. "The heavy kind that knives and claws can't pierce. So I don't wind up amusing my fireteam after a battle." She gestured to Crow's black scale armor. "Your gear held up, I see."

"Yes, well." Crow lifted his poncho, revealing heavy bloodstains down his left side. The scale armor was disarranged, some of the scales hanging by snapped threads. "The Celebrant's sword was awfully sharp. It nearly got me after it locked me in the Ascendant plane with it."

Glint appeared beside him. "It broke both his legs and threw him into an abyss! And he never gave up." Glint surveyed Crow proudly.

Crow held up a hand in a high five. Glint bumped himself into it.

"Can you mend your armor?" Silvan asked.

Crow nodded. "I've done it before. And … he held out a hand to Silvan. She took it, and he drew her close. "I'm glad you're all right," he said softly, gazing into her eyes. "Your resonance was so frightened, and there was nothing I could do."

"I was scared for you," Silvan said, squeezing his hand a little. "I couldn't face losing you like that. The lure let me through."

They gazed at each other for a moment. Crow's lips parted, as if he was thinking of kissing her, but abruptly he turned away. Silvan felt the thought in his resonance and carefully didn't respond. Emotions ran high after missions like this, and she didn't want to dive into a relationship with this man.

Not right away, anyway.

She stepped up beside him and they gazed down the hill. At its foot, surrounded by trees, was a small building with a floor and a roof supported by pillars, but no walls. A round plinth occupied the center of the floor.

Crow’s resonance went quiet. Silvan looked at him to see him gazing at the little building with recognition.

“What is it?” she asked.

He smiled a little. “Where I was resurrected.”

“No way! Really? Where?”

He pointed. “I awoke on that plinth, there. Someone had laid my body to rest and placed a sheet over me.”

Interested, Silvan walked down the hill. It felt so good to move about in reality, in the clean sunlight, with the fresh breeze in her face, after the ugliness they had witnessed in the Ascendant plane. Also, she wanted to get away from the place where the portal had been. It was silly to think she could escape the Ascendent plane by walking away from a portal, when the other reality lay alongside the third dimension. But it made her feel better, so she did it anyway. Crow trailed along behind.

Silvan stepped into the little building and gazed around. It was built on the edge of a cliff, and one of the many rivers of mist flowed by at its foot, silent and beautiful. The trees cast a mottled shade over the plinth. It was easy to imagine a Ghost wandering in, scanning the resting body, and resurrecting it in a burst of joyful Light …

She looked up to see Crow standing at the edge of the building, gazing about with a pensive expression. With the Queensfoil still active in both of them, his resonance came to her, sharp-edged with memory and regret.

“Why are you sad?” Silvan asked, sitting on the edge of the plinth.

Crow walked up and stood beside her. He ran one hand along the plinth’s smooth surface. “Just remembering those first few days. It seems so unreal, now. After all we’ve been through.”

Silvan studied his face, seeing Uldren Sov, but also seeing Crow. Immense pity rose in her heart for this lost man, displaced in life and death, still bearing the stigma of each.

Crow felt it. His golden eyes met hers for a second. “Don’t,” he said, turning away and folding his arms. “I don’t want pity, Silvan.”

She studied his profile, sensing the complex play of emotion within him. “What do you want, Crow?”

His mouth twitched as he gazed at the horizon. “Freedom.”

“From Spider?”

“From … from everything.” He gestured at the hills, trees, and misty river. “My past life. Spider. I want to … to fight evil, like we did today. We saved so many lives, Silvan, by destroying the High Celebrant. Xivu Arath’s hold on the Reef is broken. She’s not defeated, but we’ve stopped her for now. I want to save people. I want to …” He stopped and sighed. “I don’t know what I want.”

"A home, maybe," Silvan said softly.

Crow looked at her sharply, his resonance snapping to high alert. "What are you saying?"

Silvan met his eyes, so fierce and intense, and realized how careful she needed to be right now. They both felt each other too keenly for her to say ambiguous things like that.

"I mean the Tower," she said. "The Vanguard. You're a Guardian, Crow."

"No, I'm not," he said, sitting heavily on the opposite side of the plinth. He kicked a pile of leaves across the pavement. "I'm Spider's enforcer. That's all I'm allowed to be." His frustration prickled from him like cactus spines.

Silvan rose to her feet. "Then let's do something about it," she said. "Let's go back to the Tangled Shore, Crow. I have a reward to collect from your boss."

He rose to his feet and turned to her, his eyes gone a dim, hopeless amber. "Ask for Shank's inventory list, first. Spider has way more treasure than you'd even guess." His frustration was collapsing into tired lethargy. His guard was down. Silvan accidently looked into him and saw the bruises and wounds from Spider's abuse, something he had been careful to never let her see. It was not psychic damage--it was bruises on his spirit, where Spider had been trying to break him. Had the damage shown on the outside, he would have been walking about with a bruised face, missing teeth, and broken arms.

Silvan jerked her attention away, but fury rose within her like lava inside a volcano. The force of it left her flushed and shaking, lightning tingling in her fingers. The desire to burn Spider to ash gripped her so powerfully that Crow flinched.

"Don't," he said, touching her shoulder. "I know what you're thinking, and … please, don't. It's not that bad."

Silvan couldn't answer. She walked off, climbing across the hill toward the Divalian Mists. Crow followed her, troubled.

* * *

Silvan spent a long time talking to Madrid once they returned to the Tangled Shore. Crow returned the lure and the box of mutagens to his workroom, then was summoned by Spider.

"Were you successful?" Spider said, his voice gurgling in his throat.

Crow knelt before the throne, head bowed. "Yes, Baron. The Guardian killed the High Celebrant. She will be along soon to deliver its head."

"Good," Spider muttered. "Good news. I enjoy hearing good news, Crow. Business might now resume." He lifted a hand. "I have other work for you to attend to. The House of Serpents have been growing their numbers lately, and they're threatening to cut us off from the eastern space port. I want their leadership dealt with."

"Yes, Baron," Crow said in resignation. More gunning down Eliksni, when talking to them might have been a better approach. He might try it anyway and save any killing for a last resort.

He returned to his workroom to clean his guns and repair his armor before setting out on this new mission. But he was only halfway through cleaning Hawkmoon--he polished it at least once a day--when Glint said, "Silvan is coming to claim her reward. She asks that you be present."

"What is she planning?" Crow murmured, giving Hawkmoon a last admiring glance before returning it to its holster.

Glint shrugged his shell. "Maybe she wants you to make sure Spider doesn't rip her off. It wouldn't be the first time."

"There's not much I can do," Crow said. "But we'll see. It depends on what she asks for."

He stepped out into the throne room and loitered there as Silvan and Madrid walked in. Madrid stood back with his arms folded, looking like a bodyguard in his long cloak and hood. Silvan stepped forward in her plain Vanguard robe. She wore no helmet, and her braided hair looked soft and feminine against the harsh surroundings of Spider's den and his spear-wielding guards. Her resonance was calm, but an undercurrent of ferocity lurked beneath it. She had come to do battle with Spider. She kept her eyes on the huge Eliksni and never looked at Crow.

"The High Celebrant is dead," she announced in a ringing voice. "I've come for my reward."

"This is good news," Spider said, feigning surprise. "Do you bring proof?"

Silvan gestured to a spot on the floor. Her Ghost transmatted the High Celebrant's head there. It made a grisly trophy, the three eyes staring through a slit in the bone helmet. From horn to horn, the head was nearly as long as the guards were tall. One of them dragged it out into another room.

"And now," Spider said, spreading his four arms, "my entire stock is at your disposal. Take anything you please. Shank, here, can provide you with a list of inventory."

Silvan pointed at Crow. "I want him."

There was dead silence for half a minute. Crow looked at Silvan in shock, then checked Spider's reaction. Spider only stared at Silvan, then at Madrid, who stood in silence behind her. He was obviously weighing the outcome of a fight. Silvan remained cool and collected, awaiting Spider's reply.

Spider broke the silence by laughing out loud. "You want my little bird? Well, he's not for sale. Pick something else."

"You said anything in your stock," Silvan said, her voice as cold as the wind outside. "He is your property, isn't he? I want him."

Spider hissed through his teeth. The guards aimed their spears at Silvan, anticipating an attack order. Crow stood perfectly still. This could go either way, and he had to be ready for a fight. But who did he side with? Silvan or Spider?

Fortunately, Spider was a businessman. He sank back on his throne and lifted a dismissive hand. "Fine. A deal's a deal. Take him." He leaned forward, some of his restrained rage leaking into his voice. "And get the hell out of my lair." He turned to a guard and barked a command in Eliksni, which was frightfully rude and something he usually avoided doing. But if he was beaten, he could still slight this Guardian in his own language and get away with it.

Silvan jerked her head at Crow. Barely able to believe it, he followed her out of the throne room and down the passage. Her resonance was still cool, but the fury beneath it had begun to turn from anger to reaction fright at what she'd just done. Madrid walked on her other side, one hand resting on the knife at his hip, watching behind them for attack.

Two Eliksni hailed them from a side passage. Madrid tensed, but relaxed as one alien stepped forward with a toolbox in its hands.

"Engineer," Crow said. "Here to remove Glint's bomb."

He summoned his Ghost, and they exchanged a quick, expressive look. The long nightmare was over. Crow could scarcely fit it in his brain. He watched as the engineer pried open Glint's shell and expertly cut wires. After a moment, he removed a dab of plastic explosive. He carefully set it aside, then put Glint back together. He released the Ghost to float into the air, bowed to Crow, and hurried off.

Crow reached up to stroke Glint. He wanted to hug the little Ghost tightly and not let him go for a while, but not in front of his friends.

"Why would you do this?" Crow asked suddenly, turning to Silvan. "You could have asked for anything, and you chose me."

"You're a Guardian, Crow," Silvan said, her silver eyes very bright. "Nobody enslaves a Guardian like that. You're free."

Crow smiled teasingly. "Am I yours, now?"

"Why would I need a pet?" Silvan said with a straight face. "Crows are messy and noisy."

Crow laughed a little. "Well … at least let me thank you."

Silvan looked at him expectantly.

Crow drew her into a hug and held her tightly for a moment. Her arms encircled him, too. "Thanks," he murmured.

"Any time," Silvan said. "You're worth it."

Even though the Queensfoil had worn off hours ago, being so close to her gave him clear, sharp impressions of what was going through her mind. She was shaken, joyful for him, and worried about his future. Beneath that, where she tried to hide it, was a secret layer of attraction and affection. He'd never have sensed it if he hadn't been so close. He let his own gratefulness and affection resonate into her mind, too. He didn't have anything to hide, anymore. He was free. And maybe … maybe his relationship with Silvan might become something deeper than friendship, once he was a little more secure.

He released her and stepped back, straightening his cloak. Then he looked down at the Spider insignia on his chest. He reached up and tore off the fabric, then stuffed it into the nearest crate. "That's done. Let's get out of here."

He looked up to see Madrid and Silvan both smiling at him. Friends. His friends. Crow walked with them, out of the darkness and into the light.

End of part 4


	10. Part 5: Imperial Cabal

As the black pyramid fleet invaded the Sol system, creeping inward, planet by planet, they were followed at a safe distance by the Imperial Cabal fleet. Ragged and battered, they kept Jupiter and Saturn between themselves and the pyramids, creeping toward Earth without being seen. If the Black Fleet was aware of them, they made no sign.

Caiatl, daughter of Calus, Empress of the Cabal, stood at the helm of her flagship. All around her, the engineering crew worked at their posts, coordinating fleet movements, directing each armada to hiding places around the system. The flagship with its escort approached Earth alone.

Caiatl clasped her hands behind her and gazed at the planet on the view screen. Such a pretty little world, blue oceans dominating the brown and green continents, with plentiful swirls of white clouds. And almost hidden in the atmosphere, the tiny sphere of the Machine, the Traveler, the source of Light. It interested her only as a strategic resource to exploit. The planet interested her more: millions of hectares of empty land, lush and habitable. The humans had been reduced to a single city beneath the Machine. The rest of their planet stood empty. Ripe for the picking. Almost as pleasing as Torobatl, her lovely homeworld, now infested and destroyed by the Hive.

Caiatl touched her left tusk. One of her Psions glided silently to her side, summoned by his Empress's thought. "Send a royal summons to the Guardians," she said. "I wish to parley. We face the same enemies, and they would do well to join the Cabal. United, we are strong."

The Psion bowed and returned to his console. Caiatl returned to her viewport. The Guardians may be immortal fighters, but they were a rational species. Surely she could convince them that her plan was best. 

Surely this parley would not end in bloodshed.

* * *

Silvan stood on tiptoe, trying to see the view screen over the shoulder of the Titan in front of her. "Darn it, I'm missing it!"

"Over here," her Ghost said, weaving between people in the crowd. Silvan followed him and found a spot where she could see the screen at last.

The Guardians were packed into a briefing room where a live feed was being shown of Commander Zavala's meeting with the Cabal Empress, Caiatl. As the huge alien with the gold-capped tusks spoke, the Guardians murmured to each other and their Ghosts.

"She offers an alliance!"

"Can we trust the Cabal?"

"Look at Zavala, he's considering it."

Silvan watched, reaching out to draw Bramble close. These were the Imperial Cabal, not the Red Legion who had caged the Traveler and sacked the Last City. But her skin still crawled at the memory of her Light dying, and being powerless to stop the monsters who attacked and killed with unstoppable strength.

Still, an alliance would benefit both humanity and the Cabal. Xivu Arath had moved against them, as well, and it seemed that the Cabal had been helpless before the cryptoliths. They needed Guardians on their side.

The negotiations were going well until Caiatl commanded Zavala to bow to her.

The room held its collective breath. They watched as their commander drew himself to his full height, eyes narrowing. "No."

"So much for that," Bramble muttered to Silvan.

As laser sights traced across Zavala's armor, Silvan whispered, "They're going to kill him!"

But Caiatl commanded her snipers to stand down. The watching Guardians breathed a sigh of relief. Caiatl proclaimed that she would meet Zavala on the battlefield, and the parley broke up, each faction withdrawing cautiously.

The Guardians shifted, muttering to each other. Ghosts zipped overhead, passing messages and seeking friends. Zavala would speak to the Guardians next, and then they'd find out what was going on.

Bramble said to Silvan, "Zavala is in conference with the other Vanguard leaders. He'll address us soon."

"Do you think it'll be another war?" Silvan whispered. The word _war_ was circulating around the room, and everyone was uneasy. Even with an influx of new Guardians over the last few years since the Red War, their numbers were still not what they had once been. If the entire Imperial Cabal descended upon them, the Guardians would be stretched too thin to stop them.

"I hope not," Bramble muttered. "But the Cabal only understand force, not politics. If it comes to war … well, I'm your fighting Ghost."

"You are." Silvan kissed his shell. "I have full confidence in your somewhat illegal capabilities."

"It's not illegal to know how to drive every vehicle in the system," Bramble said. "I just prefer that most people don't know this."

The screen lit up with a view of Zavala, and the room hushed. He peered into the camera, a heavy-browed Awoken man with laser blue eyes and a smooth-shaven head. "Guardians," he said, "the parley with the Imperial Cabal did not go well. Caiatl's requirements for a seat at her war table are too high. Guardians bow to no one."

The room burst into applause. Zavala seemed to know this, and waited until they quieted.

"The Cabal have initiated a rite of passage," he went on. "All the Cabal in the system are invited to meet on the battlefield. The winners of these fights will climb the rankings, and the winners will take seats at Caiatl's war table. But if we intervene, there will be no winners. The Empress's war table will be empty."

More cheering. Silvan waited impatiently for the noise to die down.

Zavala touched controls that were out of view. "Osiris, my assistant, will oversee these operations. He will be joined by Lord Saladin. You will report to them for battleground strategies at the HELM. We have our own war table, Guardians. And you are already on it."

The room erupted into whoops and shouting. Zavala ended the transmission, and everyone streamed out of the room. Silvan flattened herself to the wall and waited for the worst of the crush to clear. A few people lingered behind, like her, talking intensely to one another. She recognized one fireteam with surprise--team Solarflare, comprised of Jayesh, Nell, and Grant-4. The warlock, hunter, and titan stood close together, talking in low voices and gesturing at the empty screen. She hadn't known they were back from Europa. She’d been Jayesh’s fangirl for several years now, although she tried not to annoy him too much these days.

Silvan walked up and stood quietly, waiting for a chance to jump into the discussion. Nell was saying, "All that's left of the Red Legion are the biggest, baddest thugs. We don't want them sitting at the top, giving orders. You think we could use stasis in the field without getting in trouble?" She turned and saw Silvan. "Oh. Wait. Eavesdropper."

"Hello, Silvan," said Jayesh. He looked tired, with heavy circles under his eyes. "What do you think of this Cabal thing?"

"I'm going to fight," Silvan said. "Also, when did you get back from Europa?"

Jayesh's smile flickered and went out. "Three weeks ago. The Praxic Order quarantined us. They only turned us loose yesterday."

"Oh," said Silvan in a small voice. The Praxic Order were the Vanguard's inquisitors, and any Guardian using Darkness powers would be seen as a threat. "Well … can I buy you lunch?"

The team was agreeable. Soon, they occupied a table in the Tower food court with huge plates of curry in front of them. Silvan heard all about stasis powers and the Darkness, as well as Eramis and Clovis Bray. 

But as she sat there, part of her brain began to pick up the particular resonance that only one other person could give her. She peered around the food court. Crow's resonance touched her distantly, feeling of anxiety and a desire to hide. He must be in the crowd somewhere. How was he in the Tower?

Without a word, Silvan jumped up and went searching. She threaded her way through the lunch crowd, homing in on that other mind synchronized with her own. She found Crow far back under the food court's overhang, where stacks of chairs and crates of supplies were stored. He'd exchanged his old, battered armor for a new set of gear: black pants, white scale armor, and a black poncho with a white crow motif across it. He wore a mask from forehead to chin, with his hood pulled far over it. He peered toward Silvan with one yellow eye, like a skittish cat who wasn't sure whether to run.

"Crow!" she exclaimed softly, catching both his hands. "You're here! Look at you, all dressed up!"

"Hello, Silvan," Crow replied. Relief colored his resonance with shades of cool blue. "I wanted to grab lunch, but it's busier than I expected."

"I'll order something for you," Silvan said. "Hey, Jayesh is here, fresh from Europa. Come say hi!"

"Maybe later," Crow said, peering at the crowd again. Anxiety bled through him. "There's Guardians over there who have killed me before."

Silvan looked over her shoulder at the crowd of laughing Guardians. They were unconcerned about one lonely exile in their midst, or how their careless abuse had left him hiding in the shadows. Indignation boiled up inside of her.

Crow sensed it and thought it was directed at him. He bowed his head. "Silvan, I'm sorry. I know you were excited to see me, but I can't--"

"Shh," she said, pressing a finger to the spot on his mask that covered his lips. "I'm not mad at you. Wait here. What do you want to eat?"

"Oh. Uh." He shrugged. "A lot of anything."

"The special is curry. Do you like spicy?"

His eyes crinkled in a smile. "Yes, please."

Silvan darted away and waited in line for a plate. She bought the biggest serving. On her way back to Crow, she swung by the table where she'd left her friends. "Hey Jayesh, come with me for a minute. I'm taking lunch to a friend."

The warlock rose to his feet, excusing himself. "Right. Just a minute." He gave Silvan a curious look. "Is this friend sick or something? Why do you need me?"

"You'll see," Silvan said. She led Jayesh back among the chairs and crates to where Crow waited, out of sight.

"Why would someone hide out back here?" Jayesh was saying, when he looked up and saw Crow.

Silvan couldn't sense Jayesh's reaction, but she felt Crow's recognition and delight like a rush of the Light, itself. Jayesh's tired, somewhat harried expression changed to a grin of pure joy. "No way," he exclaimed. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Lurking," Crow said, striding forward. The two friends shook hands and slapped each other on the back. Crow reached up and pushed his mask up on his forehead, showing his face to one of the few Guardians he trusted. His grin was infectious. "The name's Crow, now. I am the Tower's latest man of mystery."

"By the Light, it's good to see you," Jayesh said, grinning, too. "It's been two years with no word! Where've you been?" 

"Around," Crow said. "Looks like you got your Light back."

"Sunsinger," Jayesh said. "Look, man, come to my apartment tonight, after dark. We've got to catch up. My family's still out at Acotango, so it's quiet."

"Will do," Crow said. "I'm working under Osiris, tracking Cabal movements. Starting tomorrow, it's all fieldwork."

"Excellent," Jayesh said. "See you then." He patted Silvan on the shoulder in thanks, and hurried back to his table.

Crow accepted the plate from Silvan and sat on a crate. "Thanks for bringing him over, Silvan. And thanks for lunch. I'll pay you back."

"It's my treat," Silvan said. "And this way, you already have one friend here."

Crow glanced up from his plate, which he'd already started on. "Only one? Leaving yourself out?"

"Besides me," Silvan amended. She sat on a crate across from him. Their mutual psychic resonance blanketed them both in reassurance and comfort in each other’s presence. She didn’t try to read his thoughts, only soaked in his aura. He refreshed her like a cool drink on a hot day. His anxiety had completely vanished.

"Where are you staying?" she asked.

"Osiris already had an apartment reserved for me," Crow said between bites. "He bought me this new material, and Glint crafted it into gear. How do you like it?"

"Sharp," Silvan said, letting her gaze roam him from head to toe without shame. “You look like a Guardian, now. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! I was worried about you, moping around the EDZ.”

“I considered going to Venus,” Crow said, reaching for a glass of water Silvan had brought him. “But Glint and I decided that it was time to face the music. Osiris had been invited back, and he explained how someone can walk among Guardians without being detected. I don’t know about the mask, though. Do you think it works?”

“Jayesh saw through it,” Silvan said. “But he knows you. I doubt any of these other yahoos will notice anything. Lots of people walk around with their helmets on.”

“Like Lord Shaxx,” Crow said with a laugh. “I’m in good company. By the way, this is really good curry.”

“Hot enough for you?” Silvan said, smiling.

“It’s not bad,” Crow said. “You ought to try the stuff the Awoken pour on their food. It’ll take the roof off your mouth.”

“I have,” Silvan said. “I must be far too Earthborn for Reefborn food.”

Crow chuckled. “What about you? Were you eating?”

“I was having lunch with Jayesh’s team,” Silvan said. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Well, don’t leave them on my account,” Crow said. “I’ll be in and out of the Tower for work. It feels good to have a real job, you know? I’m helping the Vanguard against an actual threat. Not just working hits for Spider.”

“You look happier already,” Silvan said, watching the Light swirl beneath his skin in silvery ripples. “Let me know if I can help. I planned to join the battleground teams.”

“Do that, and I’ll run ops,” Crow said. “Let me know when you go. The Cabal are still setting up battlefields, and we think they’ll be at it for the next week, at least. They have a lot of rules about it, and I’m the one who gets to spy on them and learn it all.”

“I’ll see if I can run with Jayesh’s team,” Silvan said. “Nothing like a little nepotism to make the Vanguard go round.”

Crow snorted with laughter and nearly choked.

Silvan returned to the table with Jayesh's fireteam a few minutes later. As she sat down, Nell said, "Wait a minute. Silvan, do you finally have a boyfriend? Is that where you went?"

"He's not my boyfriend," Silvan said. She concentrated on her curry and hoped she wasn't turning noticably pink.

Nell leaned back in her chair. "He! She was hanging around a guy! Alone?"

"Not alone," Jayesh said. "She took me to meet him."

"Who is this man who finally caught the eye of the ever-picky Silvan?" Nell said.

Jayesh glanced uneasily at Silvan. "A new Hunter named Crow."

"Oh, him," Nell said. "I saw him hanging around Osiris. Got a thing for masks, huh, Silvan? All the mystery."

"I worked with him in the Reef," Silvan said. "Spider kept him enslaved. He put a bomb in Crow's Ghost to keep him loyal."

Nell and Grant listened to Silvan's story, attentive and sympathetic. Silvan never mentioned Crow's real name or why Spider had been so interested in him. Nell had been part of the fireteam that had executed Uldren Sov after he'd killed Cayde-6, and Silvan didn't know how Nell might react.

But Nell's thoughts traveled along different lines. As Silvan finished her story, Nell said, "So, that's how you fell for him. The mighty Hunter who treated your wounds. That's some pretty hot mojo right there. What's he like without the mask? Cute?"

Silvan thought of Crow's too-thin face with its bony jaw and cheekbones, and nodded. "He'll improve once he fattens up a bit. Spider didn't feed him that well."

"They fatten right up once they're home in the Tower," Nell said. "Good eats for Guardians. I'll keep an eye on him for you, Silvan. Make sure he doesn't get up to anything shady. Oh, have you introduced him to your dad?"

Silvan thought of her father's reaction to his daughter dating Uldren Sov. "No point," she said airily, her light tone the direct opposite of the horror crawling through her. "I'm not really dating him, anyway. We've just worked together some."

Nell turned to Jayesh. "What do you think? Is Crow somebody we should let near Silvan? Or is he a scumbag?"

Jayesh looked up, first at Nell, then at Silvan. "Uh, I think he's all right. He's a Hunter. Don't you trust Hunters, Nell?"

"No," Nell retorted. "A lot of them are scumbags. That's why I asked." She turned to Silvan. "A nice little warlock like you could get hurt by big, nasty Hunter guys. If this Crow ever pulls anything, let me know. I'll teach him manners." She lifted one hand and a void knife appeared in it, rippling with purple energy.

"Really, that won't be necessary," Silvan replied, almost pleading. "Don't threaten him. He already has anxiety from the crowds around here."

Nell softened, letting the knife vanish. "Makes sense, if he's just in from the field. Just saying, we've got your back. Sisters before misters."

"I beg your pardon?" said Grant, frowning.

Nell patted his shoulder. "Not you, Four. You're exempt."

Jayesh said nothing more, and neither did Silvan. But Grant, who had said the least of anyone, watched them both. Silvan had the uneasy feeling that the exo had figured out more than she wanted him to.


	11. Battleground brawl

Silvan worked local patrols for the following week and kept up with the news flowing in. The Cabal were gathering from all over the system. The Imperial ships were handing out gold like candy, which was customary for these types of proving rites. There began to be talk in the City of how ordinary humans might obtain some of this gold for themselves.

Whenever Crow was in the Tower, Silvan took time to track him down. He spent hours in the HELM, or the Hub for Emergency Logistics and Maneuvers, high up above the hanger, debriefing Osiris and Lord Saladin. He emerged from these meetings strained and tired, always late in the evening. Silvan lurked around the HELM staircase, no matter how late it was. When Crow emerged, he looked around for her, then they went off together to eat and talk.

By the end of each day, Crow had talked so much that he didn't want to talk anymore. But he was content to listen to Silvan as they ate together. She had found all sorts of nooks and hiding places along the Tower and far out on top of the wall. Often they sat gazing up at the Traveler together.

"The battleground proving rites begin tomorrow," Crow said one evening. He and Silvan sat side by side, shoulders touching, their empty plates stacked to one side. "So many Guardians have registered to fight the Cabal. The Red War must have been bad, because there's a real atmosphere of vengeance."

"It was bad," Silvan said softly. "They took our Light. I can't even describe how devastating it was. We'd been fighting for our lives down in the City, trying to hold the Legion off until the civilians could evacuate. When the cage closed around the Traveler, my Light stopped. I had been floating a hundred feet in the air, sniping. I blacked out and dropped like a rock, straight into a ruined building. I awoke hours and hours later, and I was in so much pain. Bramble was there, and he was hurt, too. We were scared. There was nobody left but the Cabal, and they were hunting Lightless Guardians, like me. I saw a pack of warbeasts kill a couple of my warlock friends. Cecilia--she was the most beautiful girl in the Vanguard, and so nice. I worshiped her. And those warbeasts tore her apart." She clasped her hands in her lap and stared at them.

Crow had removed his mask, as he always did when they were alone. He gazed at Silvan's face, feeling her anger and grief. He placed his hand over hers. "I'm sorry."

Silvan nodded. "I thought I'd moved past that. The City is rebuilt and thriving. But I … I haven't fought any Cabal since then. I'll face anything else, but … not them. And now, tomorrow, I get to fight them for the first time since the war. Crow, I'm scared."

"You have your Light," he said gently. "It won't be like last time. You'll be with a fireteam. You have Xenophage. I'll be giving you live reports about troop movements. You're not alone."

Silvan nodded and gulped. Crow's compassion resonated from him, taking her fear and halving it. He put an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder. "Most of them are wearing old, garbage armor. Looks like they scrounged it from the Eliksni. Their weapons aren't great, either. When their competition begins, they'll be busy fighting one another. You can shoot them in the back and they'll never know you were there."

Silvan leaned her head against his shoulder and let his resonance soothe her. She tried to quiet her own thoughts, but the memories of the war were still too vivid and horrible. The desire crept over her to sneak out to Jupiter and hide on the lesser moons again. Write more research papers. Pretend she had never heard of the Cabal. But no, she couldn't run away. Her duty as a Guardian was to protect the City and her people. Duty came first.

"I can't run away," she murmured aloud. "I have to do this."

"It'll be easier if you start now," Crow said. "These first battles are the weakest contenders. The longer it goes, the stronger the fighters will be."

"Will you fight?" Silvan asked, looking up at him.

Crow smiled. "I might. My job is recon and ops, but I wouldn't withhold a bullet or two."

Silvan almost asked what he knew about the Cabal on Mars, but bit her tongue. Uldren had known about them. Crow did not. She didn't want to bring up his problems right now, particularly when his resonance had a deep note of exhaustion to it.

"You'd better go get some sleep," she said at last. "I'll take care of our dishes."

Crow slowly stood up and stretched his back. "Sleep sounds good." Without looking at her, he muttered, "I wish you'd come with me."

"What?"

"Nothing," Crow said. "Goodnight, Silvan."

He walked away, leaving her flustered and restacking the plates, even though they didn't need it. 

Bramble appeared beside her as she rose to her feet. "He did propose to you once, you know."

"I know," Silvan muttered. "Now I'm wondering if I should have turned him down. This resonance thing is sneaky. I don't notice it until I realize it's been working on my mind for hours."

"It's not harmful," Bramble said. "Glint and I study it while you two are together. You are actually empowering each other. You build him up, he builds you up. It helps that your relationship is healthy. Lots of respect on both sides."

"I can't imagine having resonance with someone I hate," Silvan said, setting out along the top of the wall, back toward the Tower walk. "I mean, I didn't care for Crow at first because of who he used to be. But he's never been a jerk or anything. He's been very kind to me." She glanced toward the high rise apartments further down the wall, where Crow lived, and sighed. "There's too many obstacles between us, Bramble. When Zavala and Ikora find out about him, they'll kick him out. Probably in pieces."

"Don't you think he'll need you more than ever, then?" Bramble asked.

Silvan shook her head. "I don't know. He may not want me around by then. Anyway, why are we talking about this? I have to think about this mission tomorrow. I need to tell Omar what's happening, bring him up to speed. What do you think about two sidearms and some of those warlock gauntlets that let me shoot arc beams?"

They chatted about weapons and gear all the way back to Silvan's apartment. It was a safe topic, and much less frightening than life-changing relationship problems.

* * *

The Cabal had selected Nessus as their first battleground. The planetoid was a centaur, neither planet not asteroid, but shared characteristics of both. Still, it would have been merely an unattractive rock in an unstable orbit had not the Vex radically terraformed it. Now it was a lush jungle of red trees and a green, nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Mountain ranges had been raised from the core, everything block-shaped, because the robots only designed landscape in the most basic of geometry. The Vex were good at time travel and poor at nature.

The plentiful Vex tech had made Nessus a hotspot for the various alien races. As Crow landed on a square mountaintop in his borrowed Vanguard ship, he eyed the Imperial ships hanging in orbit. "Glint, they had their pick of the system. Why Nessus?"

"The Red Legion did have a base here," Glint replied, spinning his orchid shell thoughtfully. "Perhaps it made it an ideal staging point for the Imperials, far from Earth."

"Or maybe there's something here that they want," said Crow, securing his helmet's airtight seal. "Connect to that AI who lives here. Black box or whatever her name was."

"Failsafe," Glint corrected. "If anybody knows what's going on, she will."

As Crow hiked to the edge of the mountain and peered over, a cheerful, feminine voice spoke over his intercom. "Hello, Guardian and Ghost! I am Failsafe, artificial intelligence of the Exodus Black colony ship. It is a pleasure to meet you." Her voice switched to an apathetic tone. "Since my crew died, it gets lonely out here."

"I'm sorry," Crow said, trying to be polite. "I'm here to scope out the Cabal battleground taking place today."

"They are up in Watcher's Grave," Failsafe said cheerfully. "I have tracked one hundred twenty-two individual ships arriving since dawn. The Vex are uneasy about them." Her personality flipped. "I would be, too, if I had a bunch of rhinos tramping around on my hardware."

Crow chuckled and leaped down a series of giant stairsteps. "The Cabal are not a quiet race, certainly. Any further intel?"

"Their Psions have been poking around," Failsafe cheerfully informed him. "Probably hoping to steal data."

"Thanks," Crow said, landing in a pile of leaves at ground level. He summoned his sparrow and set out at an easy pace, watching his helmet HUD for enemies.

Failsafe said, "If you don't mind, Guardian, I would be interested in any data you gather. I have survived for eight hundred years by gathering data."

"I'll have my Ghost send you everything," Crow promised.

He made his way through the strange, geometric canyons and woods to Watcher's Grave, a valley among the hills with a river winding through it. There he found the Cabal, all right. Hundreds of them milled about, comparing weapons, trash talking each other, or standing guard. Each alien stood about seven feet tall, with some wearing gear that topped ten feet. They were humanoid, two arms and two legs, but with heavily muscled bodies and limbs. With their helmets with a single spike on top, they indeed resembled space rhinos.

Crow scanned the gathering. None of them had tusks, so he was dealing with an all-male force. There'd be enough testosterone in this battleground brawl to crack the planetoid in half.

"Glint, tap their coms," Crow whispered. "Let's find out who the top contenders are."

Crow crawled into a gap between two crumbling blocks of stone and lay there for an hour, listening and taking notes. The Cabal spoke in their own language, but Glint translated. This way, Crow learned that the most feared contenders were ex-Blood Guard, the personal bodyguard of Dominus Ghaul. They had the best armor and guns, and had carved a niche for themselves on Mars before the Darkness came. Other soldiers grumbled about not standing a chance with those two here.

"Akun Ga'rash and Sigrun Ak'koth," Crow noted. "They'll be the ones the Guardian teams have to take down."

He relayed this information to his ship, which in turn beamed it to a Vanguard satellite. 

To his surprise, Failsafe said over his com, "Thank you for that information, Guardian. I always like to know what the Cabal are doing." Her voice flipped to apathetic. "The Vanguard better nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

"That won't be necessary," Crow whispered. "Glint, has she been listening this whole time?"

"I think she has," Glint replied. "I'm detecting her relays all over Nessus."

Crow considered telling Glint to filter her out, but decided against it. Failsafe meant no harm, and would probably be quite helpful when the time came.

A tall Psion arrived, flanked by lesser Psions: slim, lithe humanoids with a single eye and formidable psychic powers. Judging by the golden badge it wore on its chest, it was the judge or referee. It addressed the assembled Cabal in a high, nasal voice.

"Welcome to the first battleground proving rite, here are the rules, and so on," Glint translated. "Better let the Vanguard know that it's time to send in the teams."

Crow did so. He was gratified to see that Jayesh's team, Solarflare, was first in line, and they were bringing Silvan and Madrid. He'd only had time to spend one evening with Jayesh, where they'd talked for three hours over drinks. It had been wonderful to catch up and compare notes about their adventures. Jayesh had demonstrated his new ice powers, but he wasn't supposed to use them anywhere near Earth. Nessus was probably permissible, though.

Then Madrid was coming, too? Crow hadn't known that Madrid was back on Earth, but he was glad to see that his other friend was coming along. Another sniper was always welcome.

Then there was Silvan. He almost wished she had sat this one out, because of her fear of the Cabal. He didn't doubt her fighting skills, but half the battle was in the mind. And he was anxious about what might happen to her if she froze up.

The battleground began, with ranks of battles and an elaborate scoring system. The lower-ranked Cabal clashed first, fighting with fists and swords. Many of them took blows that would have crushed a human to jelly. They fought until a combatant was knocked flat and pinned. In this way, the matches rolled on, the defeated Cabal retreating to the sidelines to lick their wounds and watch. The judge Psion kept the events moving smoothly.

They'd be at it for hours, so Crow relocated to the top of a square stone hill, where a red tree provided shade and cover. Fireteam Solarflare was en route and would arrive in another hour. All they had to do was disrupt the championship round, and the whole battleground would be disqualified.

Crow followed the matches through the scope on his sniper rifle, placing private bets on each round with Glint. They traded glimmer back and forth as they won or lost bets, because the outcome wasn't always easy to predict. It was a shame that the winners of this sport would become humanity's enemies, because televised matches would be popular with the City, too.

He was far enough away from the action to debrief Solarflare as they arrived. They landed their ships several miles away and hiked in on foot, trying to escape notice of the scout Psions. As they approached, Crow explained what was happening and his observations.

"We Guardians shouldn't interfere until the final round," Crow said. "If we disrupt the battleground too early, they'll simply regroup and hold it again tomorrow. But if we eliminate the top bracket, they'll have to gather new challengers and start over. And it likely will take a week or more to organize."

"Excellent intel," Madrid said, his voice soft and clipped. "These observations are worthy of the best Hunter."

This praise from his friend ignited a warm glow of pride in Crow's heart.

Jayesh agreed. "Yes, this makes it easier. All right, strategy. Madrid, locate a sniping post as soon as possible. You're with Crow. Grant, you take point. Nell will take flank. I'll run support. Silvan, what about you?"

"Assist," she replied. "I'll support Grant and Nell."

"Excellent," Jayesh said. "Amanda Holliday is running air support, if we need it."

Crow kept one eye on the battleground and the other on his HUD map, where the markers indicating his friends were slowly making their way in his direction. This would be the first time he'd ever been on a mission with a full support team. The only Guardians he didn't know were Nell and Grant, but their rosters said they were young Guardians, not even ten years out of the grave. They likely wouldn't know his past life. He knew the rest of them, and it was exciting to work with them as professionals.

The battleground dragged on, with two upper-ranked Cabal who fought carefully, testing out each other's defenses. The Guardians had time to slip in and position themselves around the outskirts, where they watched from hiding.

One Cabal finally threw the other and was proclaimed the winner. Next, Akun Ga'rash stepped onto the field, carrying a wicked-looking club studded with metal bolts. His higher status had granted him the right to use better weapons. The Cabal sent against him was equally tall and heavily muscled, but wore two armored gauntlets as fist weapons. The Psion signaled the start, and the fight began. The two Cabal attacked each other, giving and taking hits, bellowing like animals. Akun landed a hit on his opponent's helmet that knocked him spinning, then pounced and pinned him before he could recover. Akun Ga'rash was proclaimed the winner.

"I feel bad for the other guy," Jayesh muttered as two other Cabal dragged the loser off the field. "That was brutal."

"They're Cabal," Nell said. "The more they kill each other, the less work we'll have to do."

The next challenger was Sigrun Ak'koth, who brought three warbeasts with him. The Cabal warrior facing him carried a red-hot sword. The fight was short and ugly. Crow watched in fascination as Sigrun ripped the sword off his opponent's arm and used it on him. And these were the potential representatives who would join Caiatl's war table.

"Looks like we're up next round," Jayesh said. "Look sharp, team. The whole audience will come after us."

"Bring it on," Nell said.


End file.
